Shadow of the Bay
by jacobk
Summary: An accidental collision of space time techniques sends an ordinary shinobi to Brockton Bay. She'll need all of her common sense and good judgment as she finds her feet in a new world. With new friends by her side, Tenten will have to decide if she's going to fit in or if her new home is going to have to fit her.
1. Chapter 1

AN: With regard to Naruto canon, I take pre-shippuden as canon and include other stuff on a case by case basis. In general I keep things to the pre-shippuden attitude, which is a little more bloodthirsty than post-shippuden. I don't like to go super edgelord with it, but remember that in this time period Shino exploded a guy's arms during a ranking exam and the collective reaction was "that guy's cooler than we thought."

ooOoo

The first thing Tenten felt when she woke up was a flash of surprise that she was still alive. The second thing was a splitting headache.

She stifled a groan and brought a hand to her face, massaging her temples in an attempt to relieve her headache while she conducted a hurried self-assessment. She found that all of her limbs were still attached. They even moved in response to her commands. Other than the headache she didn't feel any pain, and a quick pat-down came up dry of blood. All in all, she was in much better shape than she had any right to expect after surviving the collision between two high end space-time warping techniques.

She hadn't escaped completely unscathed. Tenten frowned as she discovered the source of her headache: she was running low on chakra. Very low. Just a hair's breadth away from falling into a coma from full-on chakra exhaustion. She'd have to be cautious until she either recovered or reunited with her teammates.

Now that she was sure she wasn't in imminent danger of dying, Tenten turned her attention to her surroundings. She found herself in a small cul-de-sac formed by the back walls of the surrounding buildings. The road was paved, which suggested that she was in a large city. The nearby piles of refuse suggested she was in a poor neighborhood. Listening carefully, she could make out the sounds of some kind of machinery moving around and none of the sounds of nature.

The last thing she remembered was moving with the joint operating force through the forests on the border of Fire Country and Grass Country. A man wearing an orange mask had ambushed their combined forces by himself, a series of increasingly desperate clashes culminating in that final attack, and now she was in an unknown city. It seemed finding her teammates would have to be a long term mission rather than an immediate goal.

Tenten felt a pang of loss and immediately pushed it to the back of her mind. She had always prided herself on being a practical person. She was fine. Anything that she survived couldn't possibly have killed her teammates. She wasn't the type to give up easily, and neither were they. Her team might have been a little unconventional, but they each embodied Konoha's will of fire in their own way. She'd find them or they'd find her. Everything was fine.

Levering herself to her feet brought a brief spike of pain from her headache but nothing more, confirming that she truly had come through everything in one piece. Tenten said a brief prayer of thanks for the small miracle before reviewing her priorities. Find out where she was. Figure out a plan to get back to her team. And go to sleep until this damn headache went away. Not necessarily in that order.

Well, whatever she was going to do was going to start by leaving this dead end. She brushed herself off, checked that her hidden weapons were still where she had left them, and straightened her clothes as best she could before she set off. She rounded the corner to find a much more inviting scene.

It was still an alley way. There was still trash strewn all over the place. But where she'd woken up to find herself faced with blank brick walls, this alley ran along the rear of various commerical establishments. Restaurants, stores, and more to the point, bars. The particular business that had caught her eye had three young men gathered around the back stoop in various stages of inebriation, smoking and talking amongst themselves.

The three of them were clearly small time criminals of some sort or another. They weren't wearing any gang colors that Tenten recognized, but they each had matching tattoos, they'd shaved their heads into matching hairstyles, and they carried themselves with that over the top macho swagger of somebody eager for a fight to break out. Tenten smiled as soon as she saw them and made a beeline for their position.

"Where am I?"

Generally speaking it would be unwise for a teenage girl to approach a group of hoodlums at night in an isolated area, but the circumstances were quite different when the girl was a trained shinobi. The criminal elements of the elemental countries were well aware that they existed at the sufferance of the various hidden villages. As such, they limited their crimes to the sort that were tolerated at the edges of any civilized society: gambling parlors, largely voluntary prostitution, drug smuggling, and so on. They also knew better than to start trouble with anybody from a major village like Konoha.

Which is why Tenten was quite shocked when the leader of their little group gave her a long look up and down before drawling out something incomprehensible but obviously disrespectful. She stood rooted to the spot as he stood up and said something to his companions, only stepping back automatically as he reached for her shoulder.

"Do you want to die?"

She flipped back her bangs, as if the Konoha symbol on her forehead protector could possibly have been obscured from his vision. Rather than back off, the man snarled something to his companions and drew a knife from his waistband. He held it out in front of him with a sloppy gesture as his companions moved to flank her. Tenten took another step back as she tried to process the situation.

Could this criminal group have the backing of a rogue ninja? It would explain the confidence, but not the behavior. Most missing nins went to great effort to keep a low profile. Konoha would send a team to smack down an uppity crime boss; it would send a task force to utterly destroy any missing ninja operating in its territory.

Could they be backed by a major power? It was hardly unheard of. If that were the case, then Tenten was in trouble. She hardly had enough chakra to keep herself upright, let alone fight off whatever hidden protector was lurking in the shadows.

The lead criminal took another step forward, and Tenten shrugged. Whatever was going on, she certainly wasn't going to just let this thug have his way with her. A trio of kunai dropped into her hand and a single smooth motion sent the small knives flying on their way. At the same time she prepared to squeeze out enough chakra for an escape technique from the dregs circulating through her body.

 _Thunkthunkthunk._

The kunai sprouted out of the foreheads of the three men like they'd grown there. The three bodies slumped to the ground and a hush fell over the alley. Tenten looked around in disbelief. No protector in the shadows, no hint of chakra from the men themselves... either they had been more drunk than they appeared, or they were just tired of living. Another possibility niggled at the back of her mind, prompted by the gibberish the man had spoken, but she pushed it down for now. Best to focus on immediate needs.

Tenten frisked the bodies as she had done many times before. The men were unarmed aside from a few cheaply made knives. She pocketed some keys and some unidentifiable odds and ends, but the real prizes were their wallets. Unfortunately, what she found inside proved more unsettling than reassuring. The wallets contained some paper money that she'd never seen before along with a collection of cards made out of a material she'd never seen before. The cards were covered with what she could only assume was lettering, and a few of them bore photographic likenesses that matched the bodies in front of her.

The fact that these men were important enough to carry photographic identification probably didn't mean anything good. Tenten sighed. Overwhelming confidence that wasn't backed by hard power must be backed by soft power. Which meant that within five minutes of her first independent operation on foreign soil she'd created a diplomatic incident.

There was no technique that would turn back time or raise the dead. All she could do was try to make the best of things. Tenten tucked the men's wallets in with the rest of their belongings, removed and cleaned her kunai before slipping them back into place, and then sealed the bodies into a specialized storage scroll. If she was very lucky she would be able to turn in the criminals for a bounty and start off on the right foot with the local authorities. Otherwise it was for the best that the bodies just disappear.

Cleanup done, she headed down the alley and made her way out into the main street. Streetlamps lit the surroundings up as bright as day despite the empty street. This really was a wealthy city. Unfortunately, while the light was good, the surrounding street signs were as completely indecipherable as the cards she had looted off the dead bodies. Tenten knew she ought to explore the city to make sure she wasn't just stuck in a foreign enclave, but another urgent spike in her headache made her decide to put such things off for the night.

Fortunately, one of the stores lining the street was only a single story building that neighbored a pair of buildings that didn't appear to have any windows overlooking it. She didn't burn much chakra at all making the leap up to the roof. Once she confirmed that she was in a local blind spot she unsealed a small tent and bedroll and started making camp. The one saving grace in this whole mess was that her hobby of making her own storage seals meant that she carried the bulk of her team's supplies, so she didn't have any urgent needs at the moment other than to find a way home.

A wave of exhaustion crashed over her as soon as she crawled into bed. Despite that, she found that sleep eluded her for a good long while as that thought she'd been avoiding swirled to the forefront of her mind.

 _What if she was so far from home that she hadn't even been recognized as a Konoha shinobi?_

ooOoo

Tenten woke the next morning to find that her headache was gone but her other problems remained. The cards she had taken from the dead idiots were as indecipherable as ever. She tried channeling her own chakra into them, she tried smearing them with blood taken from the bodies of their owners, she tried channeling chakra into them after the blood was applied. The cards remained stubbornly nonresponsive. They were either embedded with sealwork that was far beyond her ability to decipher or they truly were used for identification purposes only.

She put the cards away as she was forced to admit that she wasn't going to get any further without talking to a local. She used a simple camping technique to materialize enough water out of midair to fill her bucket. That allowed her to at least wash her face and hands and make herself somewhat presentable. That done, she broke camp, sealing everything away into storage. She checked over the rooftop to confirm that no trace of her presence remained behind, then checked again. On the third check she realized she was stalling.

That nagging fear that she was far from home with no way to get back had wormed its way through her mind overnight. She'd heard rumors that people in far off lands spoke a different language than the people of the Elemental Countries, but she'd never met anyone who actually couldn't speak her language. None of the tales she'd heard of foreign cities matched at all even the brief glimpse she'd seen of this city last night. She was almost certain that wherever she was, it was somewhere that wasn't on any maps in Konoha. If that was the case, what could she possibly do to get home?

Tenten took a deep breath. She squared her shoulders and gave herself a light slap across each cheek, forcefully breaking her train of thought.

"Calm down. You carry the will of fire with you no matter where you are. Your teammates are looking for you just like you're looking for them," Tenten said, then paused. "In fact, if they find me before I find them then I'll climb the Hokage mountain twenty times without using my legs!"

Resolve bolstered, Tenten dropped down to street level and started looking for somebody to talk to. Her first target was a neatly put together middle aged man. He was walking down the street with a briefcase in his hand and smiled politely at her as she approached.

"Excuse me, sir, could you tell me what city this is?"

The man paused for a moment, looking at her with confusion in his eyes. When he spoke his tone was polite but Tenten couldn't understand a word that he said. With that, he resumed his brisk walk. She stared after him, rooted to the spot.

Tenten finally shook her head and decided not to let the failure get her down. She wandered for a while before spotting her next candidate, an elderly woman using a walker to take one painstaking step at a time. She proved much more congenial, clearly willing to spend all day talking Tenten's ear off. Unfortunately, she proved just as impossible to understand as everybody else Tenten had spoken to since arriving in this unlucky city.

Tenten did her best to say a polite farewell to somebody who obviously didn't understand a word she was saying, then ducked into a side alley. She had noticed that she was getting some strange looks from other pedestrians and once she thought about it she quickly noticed that her outfit, while practical and (in her opinion) quite flattering, hardly matched with what everybody else was wearing. After glancing around to be sure nobody was watching she made a quick handsign and changed her appearance in the blink of an eye, matching the simple shirt and blue pants combination that seemed popular. Using the transformation technique to change outfits was a bit petty, but for the moment it was the easiest way to keep a low profile.

She did find herself receiving fewer sidelong glances once her disguise was in place. Despite that, she continued to come up short in her attempts to find somebody she could talk to. Other oddities about the city began to present themselves as the morning wore on. For one thing, the metal carriages that she had seen parked along the side of the road proved to have their own means of propulsion. Tenten had heard that Snow Country had something similar, although there the horseless carriage ran on rails. She couldn't imagine the sealwork involved in making such a machine that could drive freely along the road. The traffic laws alone would be a nightmare.

She was able to stay out of trouble by sticking with groups of pedestrians and moving when they moved. Since she didn't have anywhere in particular to go she chose her path by aiming for the largest crowds she could find. It was a pleasant walk, all things considered, so long as she didn't dwell on her complete inability to understand a word coming out of anybody else's mouth.

Following the crowd led her to an oceanfront boardwalk. The smell of salt on the breeze and cries of the gulls overhead reminded her of the seaside village that had hosted one of her squad's more pleasant team building trips. Tenten began to consider where such a large city with an ocean to its east might be located relative to Fire Country but was jarred from her train of thought when an impossible structure caught her eye.

Out on the water was a shining fortress, standing tall and proud despite the endless passage of the waves. The base structure itself was an impressive piece of engineering, but it was made truly imposing by the translucent force field that covered the whole thing. Tenten felt at once both nervous and reassured. She would certainly need to keep her nose clean around people who could build something like that, but if she was able to maintain cordial relations with the locals-and figure out how to talk to them-such a capable people would certainly be able to get her home, no matter how far away it might be.

A grumble from her stomach brought her out of her thoughts. Tenten scratched her head a bit sheepishly as she tore her eyes away from the marvel on the water. It was later in the day than she had realized. Time for lunch.

The good news was that she had a decent wad of the local currency thanks to last night's adventure. The bad news was that she couldn't read a word on any of the menus that she saw posted outside of the restaurants that she passed. As she moved north along the boardwalk the restaurants became noticeably less fancy in appearance. Tenten knew she had found her lunch location when she found a spot boasting a pictorial menu showcasing what looked like different bowls of ramen. Even better, the chef running the place had an honest face.

The layout of the restaurant was simple. A spot to order up front and a bar perpendicular to the boardwalk where customers could sit facing the cooking area while they ate. The weather was warm and pleasant, so the entire front of the place had been opened up to the elements. Tenten placed her order by smiling and pointing, and paid with one of the crisp unused bills that had been placed in the back of one of the crooks' wallets. She received more bills and coins in exchange, which she could only hope was correct change. More importantly, she also received a bowl of pork ramen.

Tenten found a seat about halfway down the bar that didn't have any other patrons nearby and settled in for her meal. She was thoroughly enjoying her lunch when she felt somebody enter into her personal space. Spinning around on her bar stool, she saw a girl who appeared a bit younger than her standing just outside of arm's reach. The other girl looked like she had seen better days. Her blonde hair, dyed blue at the tips, didn't look like it had been washed recently. Her clothes were rumpled, and she was wearing more layers than were really needed on such a nice day. Most notable was the look of barely restrained panic on her face.

The girl said something which sounded like it was the same language Tenten had been hearing all day.

"I'm sorry, I can't understand a word you're saying."

The panic on the other girl's face was more obvious now. Her eyes darted from side to side. Tenten followed her gaze and the situation soon became clear. Two people stood in front of the exit from the restaurant, a man and a woman, unmoving islands in the stream of foot traffic. Judging from their bearing, although Tenten wouldn't say that they looked well trained, they at least didn't appear to be strangers to violence. Glancing in the other direction, Tenten could see another man lounging next to the door leading deeper into the restaurant, his sharp eyes belying his casual demeanor.

Tenten frowned. She'd been inclined to keep a low profile, but she was hardly going to watch a kidnapping play out right in front of her. She gestured to the stool next to her.

"Sit."

The other girl understood that much, at least. She perched on the edge of the stool, imploring eyes fixed on Tenten.

Tenten sighed. "How am I going to help you when I can't even talk to anybody?"

None of the three that Tenten had mentally labeled as potential kidnappers reacted when the other girl sat down, at least. Tenten turned back to her meal and scooped up another mouthful of noodles to chew on while she thought. If she were back home, it would be simple enough to tell the local thugs that the girl was under her protection. More than that, if she were back home she could be sure of securing a commendation for ending the lives of anybody vile enough to engage in human trafficking.

Here, though, she didn't know. Did the kidnappers have some kind of connection to the local authorities? If they didn't, how could they possibly act in such brazen fashion? If they did, then this was a situation that might require some finesse. Finesse was rather difficult to achieve when she couldn't communicate.

"You... help... I?"

Tenten snapped her head around in shock. She hastily gulped down the noodles in her mouth before she spoke. "You speak my language?"

The girl shook her head, then held out her hand. Her thumb and forefinger were pinched together and almost touching, and after a beat she spread them a fraction of an inch farther apart. Tenten cocked her head in thought for a moment.

"You understand what I'm saying?"

The girl nodded.

"You're... learning the language from listening to me talk?"

The girl nodded again. Tenten was shocked. After a moment she relaxed into a smile as the situation became clear.

"You have a bloodline talent?"

Bloodline talents were the ultimate proof that the world was unfair. Or that some people had been blessed by the gods, depending on your point of view. Abilities that were inherited and perhaps awakened, but that couldn't be taught. Boosts in power that outstripped anything that could be accomplished by diligent training. Tenten's home village of Konoha hosted two clans that claimed two of the world's most preeminent bloodline talents: the sharingan of the Uchiha and the byakugan of the Hyuuga. The strength of those clans had been pivotal in securing victory for Konoha in the great wars between the hidden villages.

The girl seemed a bit puzzled by the question, but after a moment's thought she nodded once more.

Of course. An intelligent person might start to learn a language after weeks of intense study. To pick it up over the course of a conversation required a monstrous talent. Never mind local criminal gangs, major villages would fight for the right to recruit this girl. Konoha would pay through the nose if it meant convincing her to join them. Other villages would no doubt resort to less savory methods. While the exact details were hard to come by, Tenten knew that, for example, Kumogakure's bloodline acquisition program was more like a forced breeding program than anything else.

That left the question of what to do. Tenten would no doubt be rewarded if she could persuade the girl to follow her to Konoha. More immediately, she could well be the only person in this city that Tenten could actually hold a conersation with. Forget her principled stand against kidnapping, saving this girl was clearly in her self interest. The only question was whether she could do it without getting herself crosswise to the local authorities. The kidnappers didn't look to be wearing any kind of uniform, but Tenten had no idea whether that was significant here.

Tenten shook her head and smiled as she realised she finally had somebody that could answer her questions. "Those people that are following you... who are they with?"

The girl looked at her helplessly before shrugging her shoulders. Tenten felt her own shoulders slump slightly. She could hardly have expected the other girl to have held a civil conversation with the people who were trying to kidnap her. A moment later Tenten realized her mistake. The girl had been learning how to speak to Tenten for all of five minutes. It was silly to expect her to answer anything but yes or no questions.

"Those people, are they with ANBU?"

The girl frowned and shook her head.

"Are they acting on the kage's orders?"

The girl shook her head again.

"Are they criminals?"

The girl nodded.

Tenten smiled and gave her a nod. "All right then."

Mind made up, Tenten acted decisively. She turned back to her meal and scooped the last of the noodles out of the bowl with her chopsticks. Once she had finished those off, she held her chopsticks in her fingers as she picked up the bowl in both hands and began drinking the broth. A quick glance out of the corner of her eyes confirmed the location of the kidnappers.

Tenten's wrist snapped once. Twice. Three times. Her bowl was sent flying out toward the boardwalk. One chopstick shot toward the back of the restaurant. The other darted past the bowl.

Tenten brought hard hands down on the counter with enough force to send herself springing out of her seated position into a crouch on top of the bar. She brought her hands together to form a seal, channeled her chakra, and with a single step the surroundings of the bar rushed past and she landed lightly on the boardwalk outside. She arrived shortly after her projectiles had struck. As expected, the female kidnapper was stumbling backward, dazed from the bowl striking her in the head. The male was pitching back off of his feet, the end of the chopstick just visible where it jutted out from his eye socket. The only surprise was that the bowl that Tenten had expected to shatter had instead held together as it fell to the ground at her feet.

Tenten frowned at the incongruity, then put it out of her mind. Darting forward, she wrapped her arm around the neck of the female kidnapper. She applied enough pressure to cut off the blood flow from the carotid artery for one breath. Two. Three. The woman slumped over as consciousness fled. Tenten released her before unconsciousness turned to death, then turned to the body of her colleague. It was a moment's effort to seal his body away with the thugs from last night.

Back in the restaurant, a ripple of panic was just starting to spread. Tenten exerted herself once more and flashed to the side of the man at the back of the restaurant. Her chopstick had proved just as deadly as its twin, bringing a small smile of satisfaction to her face. The man's body vanished into the scroll, prompting a cry of alarm from a good samaritan who had rushed over to check on the health of the fallen man.

Fortunately, nobody tried to obstruct Tenten as she straightened up, brushed herself off, and began walking out of the restaurant. She had to pause briefly to tug on the elbow of the girl she had rescued. The blonde seemed shocked at the sudden turn of events, but she followed along willingly enough.

Once they were outside, Tenten stopped to scoop up the unconscious kidnapper. Although the woman was a little bit taller than she was, it was a simple matter to lay her across her shoulders. Tenten wouldn't be able to handle a top speed chase while carrying her along, but keeping up with a civilian wouldn't be a problem. The only question was where to go. She spent a moment looking around, trying to decide on a direction, then felt a wry smile creep onto her face as she remembered she had access to a local guide.

"Can you lead us somewhere private?"

The blonde girl looked into Tenten's eyes. After a long moment of thought, she flashed a predatory grin before turning to stride off down the street.

ooOoo


	2. Chapter 2

AN: The convention that I am going with is that when a multi-lingual person speaks or hears a non-native language it will appear in italics. I also try to cue it in the text from time to time in order to prevent confusion. Per Worm canon, Lisa's power-driven intuition is also in italics, which I also try to cue with reminder text when convenient. Hopefully it all makes sense. Editing this chapter gave me some flashbacks to the good old days of hand-editing html.

ooOoo

Lisa was pretty sure that she was out of the frying pan by now. It remained to be seen whether she was going to fall into one fire or another.

She had been at the end of her rope when she fled into that restaurant. Spotting an off duty cape in civilian clothing had been a gift from above. Lisa had approached her with nothing more than a vague plan of pointing the cape at her pursuers and escaping during the ensuing chaos. Instead, two men were dead and their last partner captured in the blink of an eye. The change in fortune was enough to make her head spin.

Lisa didn't often feel jealous of other parahumans. Her own power had kept her safe, healthy, and comfortable for months after she had run away from home with nothing to her name. Beyond that, she'd done enough research to know that a thinker ability that provided specific answers to any kind of questions on demand was a rare and precious thing. Still, there were times when it would have been quite convenient to be able to kill a grown man with a flick of her wrist. Even more so, a person who had that kind of ability was a person she needed to treat with caution.

Lisa glanced back. Tenten-they had exchanged names along with a bit of vocabulary by means of pointing and labeling-didn't look like a hardened killer. Not that Lisa had met any hardened killers, but the very idea conjured up the image of a grizzled middle-aged man sporting a five o'clock shadow dialing a number into a payphone before beginning and ending the conversation with "It's done." To be fair, that was an image derived from movies and tv shows rather than rigorous research, but still. The cheerful girl who had been keeping up a steady stream of friendly chatter since she started following behind Lisa didn't match her expectations at all.

There was nothing for it. Lisa took another look back, this time lowering the walls around her power and allowing the flow of information to crash into her mind. She'd pay for this later. She'd already stretched herself during the earlier game of cat and mouse and the following need for impromptu translation. Still, better to wake up with a migraine tomorrow than not wake up at all thanks to trusting the wrong person.

 _Cheerful, friendly, compassionate person. Draws a bright line between in group and out group. Members of out group are tools to be used and discarded/disposed of once they've served their purpose._

Lisa felt the grin on her face waver as she turned back to face forward, slamming up the walls on her power before it started hitting her with a deluge of tangential information. Looked like she needed to either make a new friend or start making plans to handle her sudden yet inevitable betrayal. She could only hope that her status as the only person in the neighborhood that could understand Tenten's language would give her a leg up.

Speaking of which, she didn't keep her power locked all the way down. Not quite. When she ripped the walls down and focused she could pull meaning from intonation, body language, and microexpressions to the point that the language barrier may as well not exist. When she allowed a trickle of her power through she couldn't pick out meaning quite so precisely, but she could feel her power slotting away every word Tenten spoke as another point of data that helped shed further light on the mystery that was her language. Whatever it was, it wasn't quite like any language Lisa had ever heard, or even any language she had ever heard of. Despite that, she felt she was at about a pre-schooler's level of spoken proficiency even if she were to cut off her power altogether.

"Everything all right here, ladies?"

Lisa was jarred out of her train of thought by a voice that, upon inspection, belonged to a Boardwalk enforcer that, miracle of miracles, seemed intent on protecting a vulnerable woman instead of menacing one. Lisa felt a flash of irritation at this good samaritan's absence back when she had been fleeing for her life, but long practice kept it from showing on her face.

"Our friend is feeling a bit under the weather. It should just be a heat stroke. She'll be fine once we get her home," Lisa said. She aimed for a grateful smile rather than a mocking smirk. It seemed she missed the mark.

"We have a medical station where she can rest and get some fluids," the enforcer said, quietly insistent.

"That really isn't necessary."

"I'm afraid it is," the enforcer said, turning to face Tenten. "Miss, could you-"

He stopped talking midsentence. Lisa could see his pupils dilate. He staggered backward several steps, moving himself out of his way, then waved them past. His hand was visibly shaking.

Lisa looked back, intent on asking Tenten what had happened. Tenten turned her head, meeting her eyes, and Lisa stumbled.

The formerly amiable looking girl was surrounded by an aura of blood so thick that Lisa could feel a coppery taste on her tongue. The summer sunshine illuminating their surroundings began to fade away. Tenten's eyes gleamed in the dim light as her gaze seemed to strike forward with almost physical force. Lisa could feel her skin being flayed away while her vitals were pierced with an unending stream of knives... and then everything snapped back to normal.

Tenten chuckled, then made a comment to the effect that the boardwalk enforcer was something of a lightweight. Lisa strained to keep a smile on her face and nodded. She turned without any further ado and did her best to stay steady on her feet as she led the way once more.

The two of them were able to leave the Boardwalk proper without any further incident and make their way into the Docks. The bad part of the Docks, at that. It wasn't an area Lisa would visit on her own, but the two of them remained unmolested as they headed into ever seedier parts of the neighborhood. Lisa wasn't sure whether to credit the smooth journey to her own good fortune or to the luck of the wretched souls who avoided getting in Tenten's way. In any case, the pair of them were soon standing before a set of ramshackle storage lockers.

There had been a time when these ten by ten brick shacks had been popular as a sort of housing of last resort. Successive waves of disease and violence had taken the shine off of that idea but the real killing blow, ironically, was the further degradation of Brockton Bay's economy that had led more appealing parcels of real estate to be abandoned and reclaimed by squatters of all types. As a result, most of these lockers had been abandoned to be used as convenient meeting places for low-rent illegal activity.

It didn't take Lisa much time at all to pick out a locker that wasn't even locked. Opening the door revealed a thick layer of dust on the floor along with a single lightbulb dangling from a power cord. She stepped inside and stepped to the side, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell that pervaded the place. Tenten followed and dumped their prisoner on the floor, apparently unaffected by the resulting dust cloud. Lisa closed the door, giving them some privacy. A pair of small windows set near the ceiling allowed a bit of light in the room, enough for Lisa to watch as Tenten pulled an object from her pocket and made a crisp hand gesture, causing two more bodies to tumble to the floor.

Lisa flinched at the casual display of a parahuman ability before stepping forward, unable to contain her curiosity. What she saw confirmed what she had glimpsed back in the restaurant: each of the men had been killed by a chopstick that had penetrated through their eye socket into the brain. She couldn't help but stare at them, fascinated at how quickly these men had been transformed from terrifying hunters into dead meat.

Tenten, for her part, moved with the steady calm that characterized everything she had done since Lisa met her. She searched the dead bodies in a brisk and thorough fashion without a trace of hesitation. Lisa hardly needed a thinker ability to realize that Tenten had done this before. With that done, Tenten went over their unconscious captive in the same way. It wasn't long before a small pile of keys, phones, wallets, guns, and knives was laid out on the wall opposite of their unconscious prisoner.

Apparently satisfied, Tenten again drew what Lisa could now see was a paper scroll from her pocket. She unrolled it slightly before bringing it down to touch each dead body in turn. As the scroll made contact there was a brief whooshing sound as each body disappeared. Lisa could see that the scroll was filled with series of circles. Initially, three of the circles had been filled with a red character of some sort. After the two bodies had vanished, five of the circles were filled in.

Lisa resolutely suppressed any inkling her power might have to tackle the question of the other three circles.

Tenten straightened up and reached out to slap a small piece of paper on the wall. It stayed firmly in place as Tenten walked away, repeating her action on each of the other walls. That done, she returned to their captive and pulled a small box out of her pocket. As Lisa watched, she drew a series of needles from the box and gently inserted them into their prisoner's body. Several on each arm and leg, one at the navel, one at the sternum, and one over each clavicle. When she finished Tenten made an odd gesture with her hand before touching the needle at the sternum. All of the needles began to glow with a soft blue light and their prisoner's eyes snapped open.

Lisa could see the signs of exertion on her face, but her limbs remained limp and unmoving. A spark of panic showed in her eyes that was soon replaced by a mask of defiance. The prisoner glared straight at Tenten.

"Are you crazy? You're going to die without even knowing-"

She was cut off by a casual backhand slap. Tenten didn't seem to put much effort into it, but their captive's head snapped to the side, almost to the point of dislocating something. Tenten then brought a single finger to her lips and made a shushing noise. Her expression remained placid throughout.

Lisa braced herself, focused on the prisoner, and released the restriction on her power. This was no time for half measures.

 _Anticipates torture. Recognizes professional torturer. Is professional torturer. Has tortured-_

Lisa bit her tongue, holding back what was either a sob or hysterical laughter. Somehow she was the odd one out in this room, never having tortured anybody for information.

Tenten gestured toward the prisoner, speaking a single word that Lisa was pretty sure she understood. Lisa fixed a smile on her face, nodded in agreement, and translated.

"Who do you work for?"

Their prisoner snarled at her. "Go fuck yourself."

Lisa shook her head. She watched as Tenten made another motion with her hand and the light on the needles shifted from blue to red. There was a brief pause before an agonized scream ripped from the throat of their prisoner as her head thrashed back and forth. Lisa turned away.

The paper tags on the walls were glowing. That was odd. Come to think of it, something else was bothering her as well.

 _Scream not echoing. Sound absorbed by paper. Tinker tech. Possibly related to Tenten's power. Possibly related to needles. Possibly related to scroll. Possibly-_

She'd heard of grab bag capes before, but this was starting to get ridiculous. Lisa couldn't even start to imagine a unifying theme that would tie together everything she'd seen out of Tenten. She was pulled from her thoughts by the sudden silence as the prisoner stopped screaming. She made sure to smile before she turned back.

"Let's try that again. Who do you work for?"

The prisoner met Lisa's eyes for a moment, then looked down in defeat. "Kaiser."

Lisa's understanding was that there were between nine and eighteen signs that a person was lying, depending on the book you believed. Their prisoner was well-trained. She managed to suppress all of the conscious indicators and keep even the subconsciously controlled tells mostly under control. Unfortunately for her, though, Lisa was hardly bound by normal human limits.

"You really think you can lie to me?" Lisa asked. She felt a pang of melancholy as she turned to face Tenten. Before she could say anything, though, she was interrupted by a desperate plea.

"Wait! Just wait, please! It's Coil. I work for Coil."

Lisa turned back to study the prisoner. There were tears gathered in the corner of her eyes, and obvious terror at going through that awful experience again. Deeper than that, though...

 _Truth._

Lisa nodded. "There, that wasn't so hard. _She work parahuman_ Coil."

That last bit was directed at Tenten. Lisa could only hope that she wasn't mangling the language too badly. Tenten at least appeared to understand as she processed the response and asked her next question. Lisa again served as a dutiful translator.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. That paranoid bastard plays his cards close to the vest."

While the answer wasn't helpful, it was truthful. Lisa relayed the translation to Tenten with some trepidation but the other girl took it in stride. She then walked Lisa through a thorough interrogation of their prisoner, pulling out the details of Coil's forces, what she knew of his habits, the weaponry and training available to the people working under him, where they lived, where they worked, where they spent their free time, their allies in law enforcement, and their allies in the criminal underworld.

Lisa could tell that their prisoner didn't know the full scope of Coil's operations. Even the glimpse that she offered them, though, was sobering. Eventually Tenten indicated that she was satisfied and that Lisa was to ask her own questions.

Freed from the need to translate, Lisa took a moment to think things over. She still wasn't comfortable with what they were doing but, well, Tenten hadn't hurt their prisoner since that first time. And she was learning things she never would have otherwise. In the end, curiosity won out.

"How did Coil find out about me?"

"Low priority report of a mini crime wave headed our direction from the PRT," the prisoner said, breaking into a smile. "They don't care about that penny-ante shit, but the boss likes to dot his i's and cross his t's."

Lisa brushed off the implied threat. If Coil had anybody on speed dial who was a heavier hitter than Tenten, things wouldn't have gone this far to begin with.

"So what was the plan? Track me down... then what?"

The prisoner hesitated a bit before answering. "Boss was gonna give you a job offer."

"And a bullet to the head if I said no?"

This time the hesitation was more pronounced. The prisoner gave Tenten a long look before she finally responded. "Nah. Backup plan was to bring you in. Boss has some guys... they get you addicted to the right stuff, work you over long enough... you'd have been on side soon enough."

And there went her last little bit of sympathy. Lisa couldn't completely repress her shudder at the chill that ran through her when she considered the fate she had so narrowly avoided. She looked over at Tenten and felt a fresh sense of gratitude welling up from her heart.

Tenten had decided to help her before she even knew they could talk to each other. She had seen things through to the end despite knowing that they were up against a notorious parahuman criminal. Lisa still wasn't completely comfortable with how the other girl did things but she was starting to wonder, deep down, whether she had just been fooling herself with the idea that capes adhered to any kind of code of conduct once things got serious.

Lisa's last line of questioning walked through the details of their pursuit of her from their perspective. She knew she wasn't a physical powerhouse, but she had a hard time believing that a team of three normal people had so thoroughly outwitted her. As it turned out, they hadn't done it by themselves. It was a series of timely phone calls from their boss that had kept them on the right track and steered them clear of all of her false trails. It seemed Coil was a formidable thinker indeed, showing all the signs of some sort of short term precognition at the least.

With that, and after a few more questions netted her a set of electronic passwords, Lisa had everything she needed to know. When she indicated as much to Tenten the other girl asked her if she was sure. Upon confirmation, she flipped the prisoner over and without so much as a word of warning she drove a knife deep into the back of her skull. The knife and needles had been removed and cleaned and the body put away before Lisa fully processed what had just happened.

"What the-" Lisa began, then caught herself. Wrong language, wrong approach. " _What now?_ "

Tenten smiled at her. " _Now we kill_ Coil."

Lisa held up a hand in protest as she brought the other hand up to massage her temples. " _Wait, please._ "

Tenten aborted her movement toward the door. The knife that had appeared in her hand disappeared as she crossed her arms. She turned to give Lisa her attention, obviously skeptical but willing to hear her out.

" _Killing cape not easy_ ," she began. Especially a thinker who knew they were coming. Double especially a cape formidable enough to carve out his own niche among the villains of Brockton Bay. " _And killing get attention._ "

Plenty of teenagers fantasized about rampaging through the lowlifes plaguing their city. And plenty of teenagers got superpowers. There was a reason that the villains of Brockton Bay remained in place year after year.

Tenten kept her eyes locked on Lisa's face, searching for something, until she sighed and fell into a relaxed crouch. " _What, then?_ "

Lisa dropped into a crouch of her own. She rested her chin on her knuckles as she studied the other girl.

As far as she could tell, Tenten had arrived in Brockton Bay completely by accident. She was used to regular human contact, so much so that a half day of isolation had left her feeling out of sorts. Wherever she came from, it was far, far away. In short, she needed a friend. On top of that, Lisa was probably the only person in a hundred miles that could hold a conversation with her.

For that matter, Lisa was feeling the press of social isolation herself. Living on the run and only talking to other people when she was trying to scam them out of money wasn't a particularly healthy lifestyle. She'd been doing what was necessary in order to stay safe and avoid being forced to sign on for a life she didn't want. Settling down in one place and staying independent took a strength she didn't have. If she could lean on Tenten, though, a whole new world of possibilities would open up. On the other hand, there was the risk that she'd wake up one day unable to move before being subject to a brisk interrogation and execution.

In the end, it came down to a gut feeling. Tenten was somebody that she could be friends with. She'd have to work on getting her to tone it down with the killing and torture, sure, but everybody had their rough edges.

" _You... me..._ " Lisa began, gesturing to emphasize her words, " _team?_ "

" _Yes!_ " Tenten's grin split her face. She extended her hand forward in an enthusiastic thumbs up, then caught herself and pulled it back, muttering something that sounded a bit more serious. The knife appeared in her left hand again. She drew it across her right palm before gripping the blade carefully between thumb and forefinger and holding it out to Lisa.

Lisa took the knife and awkwardly transferred it to her left hand. She looked down for a moment, hesitating, then gave a mental shrug. In for a penny, in for a pound.

The knife was sharp enough that she hardly felt it as she traced a line across her palm. She waited a breath to see blood begin to well up before she reached out to clasp hands with Tenten. The other girl bowed her head and said something that sounded different than the language she had been speaking before. More ceremonial. Lisa held her tongue and watched their combined blood drip onto the dusty floor.

The serious mood passed as Tenten looked up at her with a bright smile on her face, then gave a satisfied nod. " _Team!_ "

Lisa smiled back. " _I talk_ Coil."

With that Lisa scooted over to retrieve one of the cell phones that had been lying on the floor. A quick check confirmed that it had belonged to the woman they had interrogated, and a quick experiment showed that the access code she had given was correct. Lisa's first order of business was to secure all the data that was one the phone in addition to everything available from the woman's email and social media accounts. Fortunately, Lisa's recent line of "work" had left her well acquainted with a few secure tools for anonymous file transfers, so it didn't take long.

Tenten watched these proceedings with a polite air of complete incomprehension. Lisa rather suspected that she was the kind of girl who would rather spend her morning taking a nature hike than shit talking on the internet. That was all right, though. They could each bring their own strengths to their partnership.

Information secure, Lisa dialed the recently acquired and no doubt soon to be obsolete phone number that would put her in contact with one of the more reclusive stars of Brockton Bay's villainous cape lineup. The call was answered after a single ring, but Lisa was greeted with silence.

"Hello, Coil," she said. Still silent. _Completely silent. Line muted. Afraid of revealing information._

 _He's afraid._ Lisa felt what had been a neutral smile stretch into a full-blown grin. "You know who I am. You know what I can do. My power makes me a nightmare for a snake like you."

She paused, reveling in the continued silence. "If you're willing to let bygones be bygones, we can call a truce and that will be the end of things. Otherwise I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Lisa heard the click of the line coming off of mute several seconds before Coil actually spoke. "You want a truce?"

 _Skeptical, furious, nervous._

Lisa kept her tone light. "I'm a reasonable girl."

"A truce could prove awkward should you join the PRT."

 _Probing for sincerity. Willing to delay gratification for the sake of his long term plan._

Lisa could understand that from his perspective placating her for the moment wasn't worth much if the end result was her leading a team of heroes to his door.

"Do I seem like a hero to you?" she asked. "I've always felt more like a rogue myself. Doing business with everybody who can afford it."

"A neutral party?"

"My nickname back in school was 'Switzerland,'" Lisa said. She could tell that her flippant tone was irritating Coil to just short of the point that he was willing to turn this into a fight to the death, and it felt wonderful.

"Perhaps I shall retain your services myself."

"Like I said, I'll take commissions from anybody as long as their check clears," Lisa said. She made a mental note to demand payment up front and to slow walk the hell out of any request from Coil. Both for the sake of petty revenge and so that he couldn't use his precog to scam her out of the fruits of her labor.

"Very well. Good luck."

With that, the line went dead. Lisa looked at the phone with a smile on her face. Her power was close to certain that while Coil was beyond pissed off at his plans being foiled, he was also willing to leave her be for the foreseeable future. She looked up to see that Tenten had been watching with a curious look on her face.

" _We make peace. No fight, no kill._ "

Lisa stood up, intent on awarding herself a celebratory fist pump. It was at that exact moment that she felt her adrenaline rush subside and the full weight of a morning spent running for her life, an afternoon spent terrified out of her wits, and a whole day of abusing her power and skipping meals come crashing down on her all at once. She barely had time to notice Tenten's widening eyes as she pitched forward and everything faded to black.

ooOoo


	3. Chapter 3

ooOoo

Tenten froze in shock and alarm for a split second as Lisa collapsed. She did still manage to catch Lisa before she hit the ground. She was, after all, a trained shinobi. The feeling of alarm lingered until she had a chance to check Lisa's pulse and breathing. Fortunately, while Lisa had pushed herself beyond her limits, her chakra exhaustion wasn't so severe as to be life threatening. She wouldn't be waking up again before night time, but she'd almost certainly wake up the next day.

Tenten did have a basic first aid kit, complete with blood replenishing pills, a variety of stimulants and pain killers, and a few soldier pills. The soldier pills would wake Lisa up and provide some emergency chakra, but the crash afterward would leave her worse off than she was now. They weren't in the middle of a fight and didn't seem likely to get into one any time soon. Better to let Lisa sleep it off.

That being the case, Tenten's best course of action was to prepare a comfortable place for Lisa to sleep. A simple water technique cleaned most of the dust and grime out of one half of the room. Tenten pulled a futon out of storage and set Lisa down. That done, she packed away the spoils from Coil's minion, cleaned off the other half of the floor, and sat down in a meditative pose to watch over Lisa while she thought.

Tenten had thought she would find some answers once she had somebody to talk to. Instead, she just had more questions. Lisa hadn't known her language, but rather had learned it on the fly. That was the result of an absurdly powerful talent. How could somebody with a bloodline like that end up on the run from a common criminal? Even an uncommon criminal should have easily been chased off by a clan that could produce a talent like Lisa. Had the girl done something and been exiled from her clan? Was she a criminal herself? She certainly had never suggested the two of them go to the legal authorities. Tenten didn't want to put too much pressure on her one source of human contact, but she did resolve to keep her wits about her in trying to piece together Lisa's background.

Also, come to think of it, did this city have legal authorities at all? Lisa had been on the run from members of a gang working for a rogue shinobi with a bloodline talent. The way she'd spoken had implied that several such gangs and several such rogue shinobi were local to the area. Any kind of decent hidden village would have cleaned out such a situation with extreme prejudice long ago. It seemed Tenten had landed in a lawless hellhole. A part of her relaxed at the thought. While the situation had its own dangers, at least she wouldn't have to explain to a foreign village why she shouldn't be executed for operating in their territory without a permit or a mission.

Tenten was pulled out of her thoughts by the dimming of the light coming in through the window. Night was falling. Unless she badly missed her guess their neighborhood was the kind of place people preferred to visit under cover of darkness. Lisa's condition hadn't changed since she'd first been laid down. Tenten judged that it was more important to keep watch outside and head off any potential attacks than to monitor Lisa's health minute by minute.

She didn't often use her lockpicking tools to close a lock, but locking the door behind her was easy enough. The shadows of dusk transformed the area from seedy to ominous. Fortunately, Tenten had long since internalized the idea that she was predator rather than prey in this kind of environment.

The immediate surroundings remained deserted for the moment. Tenten made her way across the street and found a perch on top of the roof of the shed opposite theirs. A cloak provided some useful warmth as the night fell and broke up her profile, while a bandanna prevented any light from reflecting off of her face. It wasn't the best camouflage she'd ever thrown together, but it would do.

The last thing she did before settling in for the night was to down one of the stimulants from her kit. Medium strength. As soon as she swallowed it the hazy threads of fatigue that had settled around her were ripped away. This pill would see her through the night and the following day. It wouldn't last much longer than that, but then it didn't come with the more spectacular side effects that accompanied the stronger drugs. It was hard enough to find her way in a foreign city when she wasn't hallucinating. After taking this pill the worst she could expect was some mild paranoia, which was more of a benefit than a drawback when she was standing watch alone.

While Tenten kept an eye on their door and the street leading up to it, the most important sense for this stakeout was her hearing. The clink of weapons, the heavy tread of a group of warriors, the angry tone that spoke of imminent violence... any of these would have roused her from her spot, but none of them transpired. Instead it was a night of furtive scuttling and quiet whispers. Tenten kept track of the vagrants drifting through the area, she eavesdropped on at least six illicit transactions of one form or another, but all throughout the night nobody attempted to breach the walls of their temporary shelter. Nobody even paid it any particular attention.

The sun rose to shine down on a neighborhood that was deserted once more. Tenten slipped back into their room, confirmed that Lisa was as she had left her, and settled in to wait. And wait. She thought about trying to wake Lisa up, but in the face of chakra exhaustion it was usually best to wait for the patient to wake up naturally. It wasn't like Tenten was on a tight schedule. She could wait.

It was the morning sun that finally caused Lisa to stir. It took a while for the light streaming in through the high, narrow windows to shift until it lay across Lisa's face, but her reaction once it did was immediate.

Lisa's body spasmed as though she had been struck by lightning. Her arms flailed around for a long moment before she visibly gathered herself and dragged the blanket over her head. Tenten heard a muffled groan of pain that was soon followed by an indistinct stream of words. She couldn't understand any word in particular but she was pretty confident they were curses of one form or another. She waited for Lisa to quiet down before she spoke.

"How do you feel?"

Another series of grumbles issued forth from beneath the blanket, followed by a grudging explanation. "Head. Hurts."

Tenten started rummaging around in her medical kit. "How bad?"

"Very bad."

Tenten changed the pill she retrieved accordingly, before holding both pill and waterskin out in Lisa's general direction. "I have medicine."

There was a long pause before a blonde head of hair came poking out from under the blanket. Lisa squinted against the sunlight, studying Tenten for a long moment. She eventually nodded, sitting up and scooching out of the range of the light and accepting the medicine. She downed the pill with a swallow of water and the apparent ease of long practice.

"What is it made... oh, wow, this is amazing."

Lisa stared at the palm of the hand that had held the pill. After a long moment she rotated her hand and began moving it back and forth slowly, engrossed in careful study of the back of her hand. Tenten began to wonder if the high strength painkiller had been the right choice.

"You're the best!"

Lisa attempted to leap towards Tenten from a sitting start. She stumbled over her feet as she moved, turning the half-tackle, half-hug into a pretty solid shoulder check to the midsection. The sudden movement combined with the lack of hostile intent left Tenten standing flat footed as Lisa crashed into her. The hit wasn't enough to hurt Tenten or even knock her over, but it was solid enough to dispel the illusion of local clothing that she had been projecting.

Lisa took a step back and stared at the outfit that had appeared in a sudden puff of smoke. "Seriously, what was in that pill?"

"I used the transformation technique to blend in," Tenten replied.

"The transformation technique?"

Tenten was a little surprised that Lisa was unfamiliar with such a basic technique. Deciding that the best method of explanation was a demonstration, she brought her hands together and with a flicker of chakra transformed into a copy of Lisa.

Lisa stared at her in surprise, then reached out with a finger to poke her in the forehead. Then a second time, more firmly. She drew back and wound up for an even more vigorous poke, but Tenten caught her hand.

"It disperses after a solid hit," she explained. After that she released the technique, returning to the same appearance she'd had when she'd arrived in town.

Lisa shook her head, the smile on her face going a little crooked. "We never really talked bloodline techniques yesterday, did we?"

Tenten shook her head.

"Mine is basically _Sherlock Holmes_ on... hmm, I should say, it helps me put clues together. Solve puzzles, recognize patterns, all different kinds. Like learning a language from nothing in a few days, if that makes sense?"

Tenten nodded, carefully schooling her features to hide her feelings of shock and envy. She had suspected Lisa was harboring a monstrous talent, but hearing it laid out like that drove home just how ridiculous it was. The learning and comprehension abilities of the sharingan, able to be applied to everything in life instead of merely taijutsu and ninjutsu. None of the associated hypnotic abilities, but also no visible evidence when it was being used. There had to be some kind of drawback that Lisa wasn't sharing or else she should have been able to destroy those criminals yesterday. Unless her bloodline was newly awakened, but that raised a whole host of new questions.

Lisa's follow up question broke Tenten out of her speculative thoughts.

"What about you?"

"I'm just an ordinary chunin of Konohagakure," Tenten said, voice carefully level.

Lisa cocked her head. "Chunin? What's that?"

Apparently Lisa had lived a more sheltered life than Tenten had realized. "I'm qualified to lead a team on missions away from the village. I could put in for a posting in the village administrative offices if I wanted to."

Lisa shook her head. "That's not... I mean, what is it you can do that an ordinary civilian can't?"

Tenten looked at her for a moment, lost in thought. She did trust Lisa. The two of them had worked together well yesterday and would be working together for a while. Even so, they just met yesterday. It was a little early for her to just lay all her cards on the table and explain all of her techniques. On the other hand, she didn't want to just shut Lisa down cold.

She smiled when the solution occurred to her. A bit of rummaging around in her pockets turned up a sheet of paper that she held out for Lisa's perusal. The top right corner was decorated with Tenten's graduation photo, while the rest of it was covered with neatly organized columns of text.

"You were a cute kid," Lisa said, smiling. Tenten waited a moment for her to continue, but Lisa seemed content to stare at the picture.

"It's my bingo book entry from Iwagakure," Tenten said. "I'll walk you through it."

Everything in the bingo book was more or less public knowledge. This particular copy had been retrieved in a raid on an Iwa border outpost, but similar information was no doubt floating around throughout the Elemental Countries. The major villages didn't actively pursue the bounties on foreign shinobi, but they were quite active in keeping track of the competition.

"My name, photo, and the bounty: 100,000 ryo," Tenten said, moving along the top line of the page.

"Is that a lot?" Lisa asked.

Tenten winced as Lisa inadvertently hit on a sore point. "It's not bad. For my age, other than the shinobi with remarkable backgrounds, it's a little above average."

"You want it to be higher?"

Tenten schooled her features back into a neutral mask. "I'm happy as long as I can contribute to the success of Konohagakure. Individual recognition is not important."

"No, I mean, isn't it bad..." Lisa said, voice trailing off as her eyes slid up to stare out the window. After a moment she shook herself and looked back down. "I mean, people if want to pay money to have you captured. Killed? It seems bad."

Tenten raised an eyebrow. It seemed that the medicine was making Lisa a bit fuzzy headed. Either that or her mindset was more civilian than Tenten had expected. It took her a moment to figure out how to explain.

"Any time you accomplish anything worthwhile it's only natural that rival villages will put up bounties," Tenten said. "The only way to avoid it would be to stay in the village all the time. Some clients won't even accept teams that don't have bingo book entries."

Lisa held her gaze for a long moment, then shrugged. "All right. What about this?"

She was pointing to the large letter in the upper left corner of the page. It was the only part of the top line that Tenten hadn't explained.

"It's a letter ranking. B. It means that an assassination mission targeting me would be B-ranked, under normal circumstances," Tenten said. "Informally, it means that I can lead a team on a B-ranked mission."

The Hokage of course wouldn't let a foreign nation have any say on the evaluation or assignment of a Konoha shinobi. However, the internal system of mission assignments tended to track fairly well with foreign bingo books. Both systems were ultimately evaluating the competence of the same person, after all.

"So... you could assassinate yourself?" Lisa asked with a grin.

"With a team. Attacking is easier than defending," Tenten said, shrugging. She then pointed farther down on the page. "The detailed description starts there."

An eager smile appeared on Lisa's face. Tenten didn't make her wait. "Taijutsu: above average. Genjutsu: below average. Ninjutsu: average. Weapon use: very good. Thrown weapons: excellent."

Lisa gave Tenten a complicated look. "All of this is... Konohagakure, Iwagakure, where are they?"

"Konohagakure is in the Land of Fire. Iwagakure is in the Land of Earth," Tenten said. "Where they are from here, I was hoping you would know."

Lisa tapped her finger against her chin a few times. Tenten was about to say something when she spoke again. "Does _Brockton Bay_ mean anything to you? Or the _United States of America_? _North America_? _Earth Bet_?"

Tenten replied to each of Lisa's questions with a shake of her head.

"Could you hand me the stuff we took of Coil's goons? I want to show you a map."

Tenten was shocked that she had missed such a thing. In her defense, she never would have expected somebody so easily defeated to be carrying such sensitive information. Suppressing a growing feeling of unease, she handed Lisa the sack with the looted personal effects.

It didn't take long for Lisa to fish an object out of the sack. Tenten saw it was the odd radio she had used to talk to Coil the previous day. Lisa didn't say anything as she focused on fiddling with the radio. Tenten held her tongue. Her questions about the strange technology were the least of her worries at the moment. It wasn't long before Lisa held the radio up for Tenten to see what was clearly a map. Drawn with exquisite precision, it showed a landscape Tenten didn't recognize and was covered in symbols she couldn't read.

"We're here," Lisa said. She did something and the map shrank, losing detail as the screen was filled in with the surrounding area. "Does any of this look familiar?"

Tenten shook her head again.

"Do you have a map of where you're from?"

She did. It was filled with classified information, of course, but Tenten had the sinking feeling that keeping the location of Konoha's supply stashes secret was the least of her worries at the moment. She pulled the scroll out of storage and unrolled it for Lisa to see. The hand drawn map was covered with ciphered information, but the basic geographical layout of the Elemental Countries was plain to see.

"Fire Country, Earth Country," Tenten began, indicating each of the major countries in turn.

Lisa's eyes had remained fixed on hers after taking a brief glance at the map. With each word Tenten spoke she could see Lisa's expression grow more and more sympathetic.

"How did you get here, exactly?"

"There was a clash between two powerful space-time techniques right next to me. The next thing I knew I woke up here. In _Brockton Bay_?" Tenten focused on answering the question and reining in her instinctive wild speculation.

Lisa nodded. "I don't think this is your home world."

"What?"

Tenten had come to accept that she was a long way from home. The idea that she could be on another world, though, was absurd.

"You just named a bunch of large, powerful countries. I've never heard of any of them," Lisa said. "I'd bet you've never heard of any of the big countries here: besides the United States, there's China, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, England... any of this sound familiar?"

Tenten shook her head. She caught herself scratching at her arm with nervous tension and forced her hands down to her sides.

"People have come here from other _dimensions_... other worlds, before. Alternate _Earths_. Surprised the hell out of everybody when _Professor Haywire_ ripped open a hole to _Earth Aleph_ ," Lisa said. "Almost started a war. These days, if we find the right guys and pay them a lot of money we should be able to get you home. Just don't mention where you came from to the _Protectorate_. I'd keep the transformation technique a secret too, for that matter."

Tenten was shocked. She, like most of the children of Konoha, was familiar with the stories of legendary shinobi and their legendary feats. Never, ever, not even one of those fairy tales had ever told the story of a trip to another world. To some kind of alternate dimension full of strange people and nations where familiar landmarks should be. She might have believed it if she'd been told the Sage of Six Paths had done it. She'd believe just about anything about the Sage of Six Paths. Everybody knew the man had hung the moon up in the sky, after all. But what Lisa was describing was travel between alternate dimensions by people who were alive right now. Rare, but something that could be purchased for the right price.

What sort of place was this _Brockton Bay_? What kind of people could take a miraculous, legendary technique, and turn it into a luxury purchase?

Tenten was confident in herself. She was confident in her skill, in her training, and in her judgment. She knew what she could do. She knew what she couldn't do. She knew how to avoid having the latter situation turn into a matter of life and death. But that confidence was built on a world that made sense. These people traveled to different worlds. All bets were off.

She had been pretty sure that they were safely anonymous in their temporary hideout. She had kept a watch out for anybody tracking them on their way here, and she should have been able to see or at least hear anybody who came close enough to spot them overnight. Logic said that they were well hidden. But what use was logic? Who knew what kind of tracking technique or viewing technique these people have. Somebody could be watching them right now and she wouldn't even know.

Tenten suddenly felt a chill run down her spine as a specific fear pierced through the haze of terror. That word... Lisa had used a word she didn't quite understand, and it seemed important.

"Wait, the _Protectorate_?"

Lisa opened her mouth, then caught herself. She seemed to be searching for vocabulary for the first time in a while.

"They're the, um, bloodline limit government. No, that's not quite right. They're in charge of policing shinobi," Lisa finally said, nodding. There's a branch here in _Brockton Bay_."

"There's a hidden village, here?" Tenten asked, her heartbeat picking up now that she had a specific target for her fear. "I need to go to them now!"

"Wait, why?" Lisa asked, obviously taken aback by the change in subject.

"I've been in a hidden village's territory for two days with no mission and no paperwork!" Tenten said, frustration welling up at Lisa's blank stare. "That's bad enough, but if they think I've deliberately been avoiding them it could start a war."

Lisa frowned, slowly responding. "I think you're overreacting."

"You don't understand!" Tenten insisted. Lisa really did sound just like a civilian. "If I go to them now and tell them everything without them needing to torture it out of me, they should be happy just to execute me and leave things there."

Tenten's eyes widened in panic as she thought about what might have happened if she had stuck to her original plan of slaughtering Coil and any other criminals that had inconvenienced her on her way out of town. Even if she had made it home, if she had offended the Protectorate and an honest to goodness interdimensional invasion force had showed up at Konoha's walls to seek redress for the insult... well, she'd have been lucky if Konoha would have let her commit an honorable suicide.

"You're joking... no, you're serious," Lisa said, squinting at Tenten. She wobbled in place for a moment, then visibly gathered herself. "I am way too high to explain anything right now. You're on... something, too, I think. Why don't we get a good night's sleep before we do anything drastic?"

"I'm telling you this can't wait," Tenten insisted.

"I'm telling you it can," Lisa replied, her gaze unwavering. "New bloodline-new shinobi appear all the time with no papers, no memory, nothing. Nobody gets executed. As long as they don't commit any crimes the Protectorate leaves them alone."

"That's crazy-"

"Executing people for no reason is crazy!" Lisa said, then sighed. "Look, if the Protectorate really is so bloodthirsty then we really need be at our best, right?"

"I... I guess," Tenten said. She still felt antsy. Something about Lisa's explanation didn't sit right in her gut, but she couldn't put her finger on any hole in the logic.

"Then let's get out of this dump, get a decent meal, and get a good night's sleep," Lisa said. "We can visit the Protectorate in the morning."

"You have another safe house?" Tenten asked.

"We're both obviously too young to rent a hotel room," Lisa said. "But you can look like anything you want."

Lisa held up a card. Looking it over, Tenten saw that it was an identification card for the woman she had interrogated the previous day. It looked quite similar to the cards the men she had run into when she first arrived in town had been carrying. She couldn't help but wonder if they had also been part of Coil's gang. She could only hope that her earlier transgressions wouldn't destroy the truce Lisa had managed to negotiate. Putting her worries aside for now, Tenten brought her hands together into the familiar hand sign and took on the appearance of their prisoner as she remembered it from before all of the violence the previous day.

Lisa looked her up and down, then nodded. "Yes, we can definitely find a better place to stay."

"And we visit the _Protectorate_ in the morning?" Tenten stated more than asked.

Lisa's smile took on a bit of a strained appearance, but she nodded. "Bright and early."

ooOoo

AN: This round of exposition brought to you by ninja morphine and ninja amphetamines.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Friendly reminder that people speaking or hearing a non-native language will do so in _italics_. I will also try to make it clear in the dialogue cues.

ooOoo

Lisa felt like she would be doing well if they could make it back to the mainland without a fight. If they could walk away on friendly-ish terms with the Protectorate she'd treat herself to ice cream.

She was having a hard enough time adjusting to her first public appearance in costume. Just maintaining a cape-appropriate pose was a strain. She had to focus on keeping her head up, shoulders back, and gaze away from the gaggle of people who had formed a loose circle around where they stood on the ferry. Next to her, Tenten stood in a completely natural version of the pose Lisa was aping. She looked confident and quietly lethal as she gazed at the Protectorate base off in the distance.

Lisa did feel proud of her costume, at least. Once they'd gotten settled into their hotel room she had dug deep into her cash stash in order to put something together that wouldn't embarrass her in front of the professional heroes. The base layer was a crisp pair of slacks and tidy white blouse. The actual parahuman-ness of her look came from the lightweight trench coat that covered her from shoulder to knees. A sash tied around her middle allowed her to present a bit of femininity, but the details of her figure were well obscured. A domino mask covered her eyes, and atop her head was the piece de resistance: a fedora with attached wig that allowed her to put her own hair up and present herself as a brunette.

All in all, the costume did a terrific job of protecting her identity. The effort was undercut somewhat, however, by Tenten's adamant refusal to wear a mask.

It was too bad, really. The girl's native dress sense lined up surprisingly well with parahuman culture. Her high collared shirt and color-coordinated pants screamed kung-fu princess, which also seemed to be a decent description of her power set. With her face covered, she would have fit right in to the PHO Brockton Bay cape montage.

Unfortunately, she had adamantly refused to wear any of the masks Lisa had picked out. Lisa had brought them along with her in her pockets, just in case. It would be nice if they could at least try to protect their identities.

" _Are you sure you don't want to wear a mask?_ " she asked. Some of the surrounding onlookers had their cell phones out, but walking into the Protectorate with a bare face was a whole different level of self outing compared to random photos showing up on the internet.

" _I told you, I will not give them an excuse to take offense_ ," Tenten replied, her voice calm.

" _And I told you, it's expected for independent parahumans to keep their identities secret_ ," Lisa said. " _You can't take this back once you walk in there. Please-_ "

" _I have done nothing to be ashamed of_ ," Tenten said, making a sharp gesture with her hand to indicate that her mind was made up. " _I will not hide my face_."

Her entire bearing was confident and serene. It made for quite a contrast with her frantic reaction to the mere existence of the Protectorate. Lisa had been intending to save the use of her power to help navigate the minefield awaiting them at the Rig, but decided it was worth expending a little bit to check in on her partner's mindset.

 _Determined to conduct herself with pride today. At peace with whatever happens. Prepared suicide pill to be used in the event of forceful interrogation._

Lisa began massaging her temples to ward off a non-power induced headache." _Please don't do anything drastic in there. If you follow my lead, everything should work out_."

Tenten nodded. " _Translate my words faithfully and I will follow your cues. What will be will be._ "

Lisa was, of course, the only avenue Tenten had available to communicate with anybody in English. Lisa had given her a bit of a crash course in the language last night but she wasn't at the point where she could do much besides greet people, count, and ask where to find a bathroom. Accordingly, Lisa would be able to control their conversation with the Protectorate to some extent. On the other hand, Lisa had found that Tenten was quite observant. Lisa might be able to fudge a few words here or there to create a polite impression, but she doubted she'd be able to slip any wholesale changes past the other girl. As to what Tenten would do if Lisa broke her trust, well, she really didn't want to find out.

One thing that had become abundantly clear was that Tenten considered Lisa to be dangerously naive when it came to negotiations between high level capes. Lisa thought that Tenten ought to respect her expertise-she was a Thinker and the only one of them native to this universe, for crying out loud-but the disrespect was less galling in the wake of the discovery that Coil had been perfectly willing to kidnap and brainwash her into working for him.

Lisa still didn't think the Protectorate was willing to deploy the kind of Gestapo tactics Tenten feared. If they were, guys like Uber and Leet should be in an unmarked grave somewhere instead of deleting her comments on their Youtube videos. Even so, she was starting to believe that the Protectorate wasn't quite the bumbling, image-conscious warm and fuzzy bunch of yahoos that PHO would have had her believe. She was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but she was all too aware of the many ways this meeting could go horribly wrong.

The ferry jolted slightly as it came in to the dock. No more time to brood. Lisa squared her shoulders and walked off the ferry with purpose. The crowd parted as the tourists scrambled out of the way of the obvious pair of capes. It was a heady feeling for somebody who had been skulking in the fringes of society for so long. Tenten fell in step behind her as they made their way inside.

The lobby was decorated with a bold futuristic aesthetic that spoke to the Protectorate's vision of a better tomorrow. It also had open sight lines to allow the five hidden containment foam turrets Lisa could pick out to catch any intruders in an unavoidable crossfire. Most of the incoming crowd would head for the gift shop or the large desk up front that sold tickets and tour packages. Lisa made her way to a small concierge's desk off on the other side of the room.

"Hello there," Lisa said as they approached the desk. "We have an appointment. Confirmation code kilo victor five five three nine."

The receptionist looked up at her, then glanced over at Tenten. She saw his eyes linger for an extra beat on Tenten's unmasked face, but his expression remained calm as he turned his gaze back to her.

"You're right on time. Charlie will take you to the meeting room."

The young man who jumped to his feet and made his way out from behind the desk would be Charlie, then. Lisa didn't need to tap into her thinker abilities to figure that much out. He seemed a bit nervous but did a decent job maintaining his professional demeanor as he greeted the pair of them. He then used his ID card to buzz them through a discreet security door located behind the desk.

The door led them into a short corridor where they were analyzed by a plethora of barely concealed scanners while being covered by another plethora of barely concealed weapons. No alarms sounded nor were any weapons fired as they made their way down the hall to the door that led into the Protectorate proper. Tenten had at least listened to Lisa's advice regarding weaponry, then.

The whole process had gone much more smoothly than Lisa had anticipated, at least so far. She had done her due diligence the previous night in a haze of drug and thinker fueled internet browsing. At least enough to know that rogues rarely visited the Protectorate of their own volition. Most simply hunkered down and tried to live their lives without interacting with other capes at all. It was the independent heroes who were more likely to visit the Rig to meet their compatriots in the fight against villainy.

Despite that, the Protectorate was after all an enormous bureaucracy and they had procedures in place for everything. Once Lisa had called their non-emergency cape contact number she was able to make an almost immediate appointment with no further ado. The employee on the other side of the line hadn't given her one bit of hassle over her declared intent to become a rogue. She had expected a bit of a cold shoulder once she declared her neutrality, but the Protectorate had continued to extend every courtesy.

The smooth sailing was making Lisa feel jumpy. She wasn't sure how much of it was coming from the instincts she'd developed from living on her own and how much was Tenten rubbing off on her.

In any event, their guide led them to their meeting room without anything going horribly awry. The room itself was quite nice. The door opened onto a fair bit of open space. The walls were decorated with iconic photos from Brockton Bay's parahuman history. At a glance it appeared that photos from each era were separated by tasteful arrangements of potted plants. Along the far wall a small conference table sat beneath an enormous window that offered a view of the city skyline across the bay.

"Would either of you care for a drink?" their guide asked, fidgeting a bit as he came under the scrutiny of a pair of largely unknown capes. "Or a snack?"

"We're fine, thanks," Lisa said.

"All right. Your contact should be here in a few minutes."

With that he departed, leaving the two of them to their own devices. Tenten began studying the photographs on the wall while Lisa wandered over to the windows. From the outside the protective force field transformed the Rig into a glittering jewel. From the inside looking out that same force field turned an ordinary city into a kaleidoscopic landscape of shining color and deep darkness, all swirled together in a crazy whirl with no pattern or logic to it.

Lisa sighed. Not so long ago she'd had everything figured out. She'd had a parahuman power, but she steered well clear of the parahuman world. There were rules, lines, and as long as she stayed inside them she'd considered herself safe. Now, after being hunted by Coil and saved by Tenten, she was wearing a costume and jumping into cape life head first. She could only wonder what the world would look like tomorrow.

She offered a wry grin at her ghostly reflection in the window before squaring her shoulders and pulling herself away from the view. She settled into a chair that offered her a view of the door and did her best to look relaxed. She didn't have too long to wait before the door opened.

Lisa felt a thrill of relief when she recognized the iconic costume of Miss Militia as the hero walked into the room. She had hoped that they would meet with a fellow cape, and of the local heroes Miss Militia was reputed to be by far the most patient and empathetic. They exchanged a nod of greeting. Lisa had just started to think that things would be all right when Miss Militia spotted Tenten.

Lisa's teammate had positioned herself so that she was in the natural blind spot of anybody entering the room. _Not a coincidence._ Lisa could tell the instant that Miss Militia locked eyes with Tenten. The hero's eyes widened slightly before they changed, going ice cold. Her posture shifted just so. Lisa was struck with the bone deep certainty that Tenten was about to be shot. She leapt to her feet, desperately trying to think of how to salvage the situation.

Tenten's knees hit the floor before Lisa had fully stood. Her forehead followed a heartbeat later, the thud coinciding with the clatter as the file folder Miss Militia had been carrying finished falling to the ground. She held that pose, completely submissive. Miss Militia looked from her to where Lisa had frozen once her intervention proved unnecessary.

"Explain."

Miss Militia's tone was stern, but she had shed the deadly edge that had appeared in that perilous moment of surprise. It may never have been there in the first place, Lisa decided. She was too keyed up and was seeing threats everywhere. She took a deep breath. Time to get back to the plan.

"My partner cannot speak English. She also has a deep seated fear of authority that I can neither explain nor soothe away," Lisa said. "I want to act as her translator so she can see what the Protectorate is really like."

Miss Militia's posture relaxed, and Lisa started to see a bit of the famous den mother of the Protectorate East Northeast peeking through. "Go on, then."

Lisa took a few steps to stand beside Tenten, then looked down at her. " _She'll hear you out._ "

Tenten began to speak, still not lifting her head from the floor. Lisa translated word for word as best she could.

" _I arrived in Brockton Bay three days ago. I do not have a passport, nor do I have a visa permitting me entry to the city. I have not presented myself to the Protectorate until now. I have no excuse._ "

She paused, then continued once Lisa finished translating. " _I humbly beg that you restrict punishment to myself alone. I will return the bodies-_ "

Lisa was simultaneously mortified at the change of subject and grateful that she had been translating one sentence at a time as she hissed an interruption. " _Don't say anything about bodies_."

Tenten raised her head to regard Lisa with a calm gaze. " _I don't want them to think I'm trying to steal any secrets._ "

" _That's_..." Lisa said, shaking her head. " _Just let her talk before you bring that up again._ "

Lisa straightened up and focused on Miss Militia. "Sorry about that. I thought going any further would be unnecessarily morbid. Unless we do have some reason to discuss the form of her execution."

"What? No. No," Miss Militia said, "visiting Brockton Bay without approval isn't a crime."

"Thank you!" Lisa said, before turning to relay her statement to Tenten.

Tenten gave Lisa a skeptical look, obviously doubtful of what she was hearing. Without saying anything, she returned her forehead to the ground.

Miss Militia cleared her throat. "Please tell her that the Protectorate focuses its attention on those who go out of their way to cause trouble."

This time after Lisa translated Tenten looked up to see that Miss Militia was offering her hand. She accepted the help and returned to her feet before bowing once more in deep gratitude. Even after she stood straight she still seemed to be in a bit of a daze, torn between happiness and disbelief. Lisa held in her sigh of relief. While it looked like no blood was going to be shed today, the real test was whether they'd be able to leave without attracting any undue attention from the Protectorate.

Miss Militia scooped her folder up off the ground before leading the two of them to the conference table at the back of the room. Once they were all seated she set the folder down on the table in front of her before studying them for a moment with an even gaze.

"She arrived here three days ago... how, exactly?"

"Does it really matter?"

Putting the right spin on Tenten's background was always going to be tricky. Lisa would have preferred to avoid the matter altogether, but that was impossible once they were at the Rig. Obviously telling the Protectorate that she came from a different dimension, retained all her memories, and wanted to go home would not go over well. Even more so if it came out that her home dimension was ruled by powerful, murderous capes. On the other hand, if the Protectorate decided that Tenten was just another Case 53 then they wouldn't pay her any particular attention.

Case 53s. Amnesiac, super powered people who had been popping up at random throughout the world for nigh on twenty years. They were fodder for internet conspiracy theories and a convenient label for somebody looking to fend off questions about her past. The problem was that if Lisa made the straightforward claim that Tenten was in fact a Case 53, the Protectorate would be able to probe her story and would inevitably discover the inconsistencies.

Lisa had settled on the plan of acting shifty and evasive whenever Tenten's background came up. Eventually she might slip up and say something that implied Tenten didn't have much memory of her own past. Ideally the Protectorate would conclude that they were trying to hide the "fact" that Tenten was a Case 53. The first step in that plan was to blow off Miss Militia's perfectly reasonable question.

It was considered very poor form to press a friendly cape about their past. On the other hand, Tenten had opened the door somewhat with her odd behavior and refusal to wear a mask. Lisa honestly wasn't sure how things were going to shake out.

In the end Miss Militia simply sighed and shook her head.

"I suppose not," she said. "Before we proceed any further, would you like us to provide a translator?"

Lisa laughed. "Good luck with that. Unless you have somebody on staff who can learn a new language on the fly?"

Miss Militia shook her head again. "We'd have to bring her in from Los Angeles."

"Don't worry about it," Lisa said. "She already got what she came for. I'm the only one who's interested in doing paperwork."

"All right," Miss Militia said, shrugging, before looking down at the folder. "For the record, you are going by Tattletale and she is Tenten?"

Lisa nodded. The name wasn't exactly mature but she did have an image she wanted to project. She'd also always adored alliteration.

"No group name. No intent to engage in law enforcement," Miss Militia continued. "Do you have an idea of what you will be doing?"

"I thought I might try my hand at private investigation," Lisa said. "Find lost pets, look into cheating spouses, that kind of thing."

"Right. You're a Thinker?"

Another question Lisa would be well within her rights to blow off. Unfortunately, she did have that image to project.

"Nothing flashy or supernatural. Just... picture the most intelligent person you know, and now imagine they were twice as smart. Got it?" Lisa said. "You're imagining a moron."

Generally speaking there were two kinds of thinkers. The quiet ones who stuck to their own business, focused on leveraging their abilities, and stayed under the radar until they took over a city or sent some S-class threat to the birdcage. And the loud ones, who bragged about their ability to anybody who would listen and inevitably got themselves killed when they bit off more than they could chew.

Lisa didn't want the Protectorate's respect. She didn't want their future business. Ideally, she wanted them to completely forget about her once she walked out the door. It was galling to play the fool, but it should be worth it in the end.

Miss Militia didn't say anything in response to her boasts. This obviously wasn't her first rodeo. She took a few notes before looking over at Tenten. "And she's a grab bag cape?"

Lisa smiled as she looked over at her teammate. Tenten had her game face back on but she was having a hard time suppressing the relieved grin that kept breaking through her stern facade. "Focused around close range combat, yes."

Tenten could put on a very convincing performance as a brute and combat thinker. As to any other aspects of her power set, Lisa figured that what the Protectorate didn't know couldn't hurt the two of them.

"You met in the last three days, decided to team up and go into business together, and now you're here to register with us," Miss Militia said. It was not quite a question, but the intent was obviously there.

"She helped me, I helped her, we bonded through shared adversity," Lisa said airily, waving her hand dismissively. "A story you've heard a hundred times before, I'm sure."

Miss Militia took a few more notes before closing the folder and pushing herself back from the table. "That's everything from me. For us these meetings are mostly about getting to know the parahumans in our city. If you're interested, I can take you on a tour of the Rig. We'd be seeing a few highlights of the public tour as well as giving you a look at some of the support we can offer to parahumans who join the Protectorate. We are, after all, always hiring. Otherwise I'd be happy to answer any questions you have now before you head back to Brockton Bay."

Lisa immediately accepted the offer of a tour. The chance to look around the Rig along with one of the premier superheroines on the east coast was too good to pass up. Only after she spoke did she realize she probably should have run the idea past Tenten first. She took a minute to-rather sheepishly-explain what had just happened.

After she finished the explanation, Tenten cocked her head in thought for a moment before she smiled. "They wish to cow us into servility with a show of strength. This will be a good chance to take their measure."

Lisa just shrugged. Now really wasn't the time to get dragged into another debate about the true nature of the Protectorate. Instead she turned back to Miss Militia with a smile. "She's interested in taking a look around as well."

ooOoo

They began at the top. The observation platform built atop the Rig offered a three hundred and sixty degree view of the crazy quilt landscape visible through the barrier. Lisa noticed that along the way all of the security they encountered was biometric. She had to give the Protectorate credit for showing at least a little caution around an unknown Thinker. She also noticed with some amusement that Tenten reacted to both the tinker built holographic security interfaces and the decidedly non-tinker built elevator with the same sense of wide-eyed wonder.

The next stop was the special hall of the Protectorates museum that was dedicated to showing off the relics from Brockton Bay's cape history. Lisa had to admit that while she had read about the exhibits before coming here, seeing such things as weapons actually used by the Teeth before they were driven out of the city in person was another thing entirely. Say what you want about Brockton Bay's economy, the city had a lot of fight in it. There weren't too many places that could call themselves former territory of the Butcher.

After that the began the non-public part of the tour. This was what Lisa had been waiting for, the good stuff that tourists didn't get to see. They had to go through another impressive array of security devices before passing through a door that wouldn't have been out of place on a bank vault to finally enter the Protectorate's work space. To describe it more specifically, a cubicle farm.

"The Protectorate isn't just focused on parahumans fighting in the streets," Miss Militia said, leading them over the a cubicle on the outer edge of the room. "The work we do wouldn't be possible without the support of the PRT and people like Mark here."

"You're too kind," Mark, a slightly overweight, balding, middle-aged man, didn't seem too out-of-sorts at speaking with a costumed hero. "Are these the new rogues? I tell you, it's so nice to meet people who want to be responsible with their powers. Even some of the folks here at the Protectorate, not that you heard it from me, it's like pulling teeth to get them to file their reports on time..."

Without pausing for a response, Mark proceeded to launch into a tribute to the wonders of paperwork and bureaucracy. Lisa paid enough attention to nod and smile at the appropriate places. She was starting to have trouble maintaining even that level of alertness as he started lauding the importance of TPS reports when she was brought out of her haze by a tug on her sleeve.

Turning back, she saw a surprisingly serious expression on Tenten's face.

" _This is a test_."

Lisa raised an eyebrow. " _How so?_ "

" _I'm not sure_ ," Tenten admitted. " _It's a gut feeling. I can't see underneath the underneath_."

" _I'll figure it out. Thanks_ ," Lisa said, before turning back to Mark. "My teammate doesn't speak English. I tried to explain a little about what you do. Sorry about the interruption."

"Not at all, not at all. Anyways, like I was saying, what's really important is the cover sheet..."

This time, as she tuned out on the stream of words, she let down the walls on her power and focused on the office around her. On what she could see in her peripheral vision. On what she could pick out from the hum of background conversation. It didn't take long for her to confirm Tenten's hunch. Lisa kept up her polite facade and kept gathering information as they moved from cubicle to cubicle.

By the time they were ready to leave the room Lisa had spotted three husbands cheating on their wives, two wives cheating on their husbands, two moles the PRT knew about, one they didn't know about, six hidden cameras, four more hidden cameras she couldn't see but could deduce existed, five members of PRT assault squads who had never seen the inside of a cubicle before, and one poor bastard from WEDGDG keeping the whole dog and pony show running. The question was what she was going to do with the information.

Nothing. At least for now. While blurting out information would burnish her image as an arrogant naif, Lisa did want to be known to have at least a little bit of discretion. Besides, if her suspicions were correct, this wasn't going to be the end of the tour.

Sure enough, Miss Militia spoke up as they walked out of the office. "We have workout facilities on the Rig that are made available to all Protectorate employees. Non-villainous parahumans are also permitted to use the gym at will, although we do have some blackout dates and times. We can go take a look if you're interested."

Lisa indicated for the hero to lead the way. When they arrived the doors opened to reveal what looked for all the world like a commercial gym. A nice one, as far as Lisa knew. She wasn't much of a physical exercise enthusiast.

Tenten, on the other hand, lost most of her reserved demeanor as her eyes lit up at the sight of all of the workout machines. She moved from station to station, peppering Lisa with questions about each of the machines. Not knowing the answer herself and unwilling to deploy her thinker abilities for such a plebeian purpose, Lisa was forced to play translator for quite some time. Finally they reached the end of the machines and Tenten darted ahead to the rack of dumbbells along the far wall.

"Not exactly a gym rat, are you?" Miss Militia said once Tenten was out of earshot. Lisa could hear the smile in her tone.

"I work out!" Lisa protested. "When you lift a coffee mug up to your mouth, that's a 'curl,' right?"

Before Miss Militia could reply, Tenten came bounding back towards them. She had a dumbbell clutched in each hand. While the metal blocks on either side of the bar were roughly the size of her head, Tenten's movements didn't seem to be affected at all by the weight.

" _Check it out_ ," she said, holding the dumbbells out for Lisa's perusal, " _they put the weight on each side of the bar like this so it's evenly balanced!_ "

Lisa scratched the back of her head, a bit bemused by Tenten's excitement. " _What do you usually use for weights?_ "

" _Rocks_."

With that, Tenten started a round of shadowboxing. A jab. A jab into a cross. A more complicated combination that ended with a nifty spinning backhand strike. Each move was crisp, precise, and completely unaffected by the weights she was holding. When she finished, she looked down with longing written all over her face.

" _We could buy some weights for you to use_ ," Lisa offered.

Tenten hesitated, then shook her head. " _If I did anything to make training easier, sensei would be disappointed in me_."

Miss Militia spoke up as the three of them moved toward the weight rack so Tenten could put the dumbbells away. "For workouts that need a bit more space, we have another room at the back."

Lisa and Tenten trailed behind the hero as she led them through another door and into what looked for all the world like a boxing gymnasium. A boxing ring had pride of place in the center of the room. It was currently hosting a pair of shirtless men in what looked like a training bout. Once Lisa tore her eyes away from that she saw that a series of exercise stations had been set up around the ring: a speed bag, a heavy bag, a jump rope area, and a plethora of gymnastic equipment that she didn't recognize. A running track hugged the wall as it ran around the outside of the room.

"I'm sure Sergeant Menendez would welcome a friendly spar," Miss Militia said.

Lisa translated for Tenten. The pair of them shared a knowing look. Of course Lisa wasn't the only one the Protectorate would be interested in testing. Lisa's initial instinct was to play her cards close to her vest, but it could prove useful to show a bit of competence in front of the Protectorate. She could see similar thoughts running through her teammate's mind. After a long moment Tenten shrugged.

" _It will be good to know where we stand_ ," she said, then made her way to the ring.

Miss Militia exchanged a few words with the men in the ring. One of them ducked out, nodding at Tenten as she passed him on her way into the arena. He made his way over to stand next to the two parahumans and watch the spar.

The two combatants took a moment to size each other up. Lisa wasn't a martial arts expert, but the sergeant was certainly built like somebody who could win a bare-knuckles brawl. He stood a head taller than Tenten, and half again as wide. Of course, that didn't mean much in the age of parahumans.

It was Tenten who broke the stalemate. Rather than making a move, she turned to address Lisa.

" _Is this a deliberate insult?_ "

Lisa turned to Miss Militia. "Perhaps an introduction is in order."

She didn't believe for a heartbeat that anybody in this room hadn't been briefed on Tenten. Her suspicions were confirmed with a glance at the expression of the man standing behind Miss Militia's shoulder. It was only fair that they learn a little bit about this Sergeant Menendez.

Apparently Miss Militia agreed. "The sergeant is our hand to hand combat instructor. He's won the northeastern division of the PRT's unarmed combat championships three years running."

Lisa shrugged, then turned back to Tenten. " _It's not an insult. Try not to hurt him too badly_."

Even with her power active Lisa had a hard time following exactly what happened next. The two fighters approached each other. It looked for all the world like Menendez's right hook was about to send Tenten into next week, then there was a motion that Lisa didn't quite catch. Suddenly he was overextended while Tenten was positioned off to his side, perfectly in balance with her palm strike set to shatter several vertebrae-until she pulled the hit at the last second, turning it into a shove that sent Menendez stumbling a few steps forward into the ropes.

He steadied himself for a moment before moving to engage with her once more. He threw a punch. This time, Tenten dodged without retaliating. Another punch, another dodge. Another punch, another dodge. The same punch each time, actually. Lisa frowned.

 _She's maneuvering him into trying the same attack each time, then correcting the flaws in his form as he misses._

The two of them circled the ring a few times before there was a change in the pattern. Tenten caught the incoming punch with her left hand, stopping it cold. She then nodded at Menendez in approval before making a circling gesture with her right hand to indicate repetition. Then she spoke her first words in English for the day.

"One hundred."

Lisa decided that this would be a good time for a side conversation. She nudged Miss Militia in the side with her elbow, drawing the hero's attention away from the punching drill going on in the ring.

"You guys didn't put that room together just for me, did you?"

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

The microexpressions visible above her mask had already answered Lisa's question. Of course she'd known the answer before she asked it, but there was still something exhilarating about letting her power off the leash and picking up body language almost to the point of mind-reading.

"It just seems like an awful lot of work to dig up that many people for one little test," Lisa said.

"How so?"

"Well," Lisa said, beginning to tick items off on her fingers. "Three guys cheating on their wives."

Leaving out the female infidelity would show how she could be blinded by her own bias.

"Four PRT assault grunts riding desks for some reason."

The fifth had at least had the decency to pull up solitaire on his office computer.

"A mole that you have to know about already."

The other one had been a little more subtle. Not to mention that Lisa didn't want to burn one of Coil's guys even in a controlled environment.

"Four hidden cameras watching over the whole thing."

The cameras were the real tipoff to what was going on. They were deliberately hidden with varying levels of skill. If Lisa had been on top of things spotting the cameras would have alerted her to the test before Tenten had. She figured that picking out four of them was good, but not great.

"It seems like a lot to put together for one visit."

Miss Militia was obviously smiling now. "We like to give our thinkers a chance to test themselves in a controlled environment.

"You should try raising the difficulty a little if you want to give them a real challenge," Lisa said, layering as much arrogance as she could into her tone of voice. It was always possible that they would suspect her of sandbagging, but all she could do was behave so that the simple and obvious conclusion was to dismiss her as a threat.

Tenten called out for her, interrupting the conversation. Looking up, Lisa saw that there had been a pause in activity in the ring. She stepped forward to talk with her teammate.

" _He's getting tired. Any more punching practice will just teach bad habits_ ," Tenten said. " _Time for endurance training! Tell him he needs to do twenty laps around the room. Switch between four laps running, and one on his hands._ "

Lisa chuckled, then translated her directions. Sergeant Menendez looked like he was about to protest until Tenten snapped at him. Even without translation he got the message, practically leaping over the ropes before hitting the track and starting to run.

" _You look like you had fun_ ," Lisa said.

Tenten smiled, looking a bit sheepish. " _I used to earn pocket money pitching in at the academy between missions._ "

" _Actually_ ," Lisa said, her smile widening, " _that gives me an idea_."

ooOoo


	5. Chapter 5

_AN: Extended author's note at the end._

ooOoo

Tenten took a slow, deep breath. She held it for a count of three, then exhaled slowly as she straightened out of her crouch. As always, her tired muscles screamed at her to push through the motion in a quick burst. As always, she ignored the impulse and moved at a controlled pace. A moment after she fully straightened up the rock that she had been carrying hit the ground next to her, flattening the grass with a heavy thud.

She smiled at the healthy ache that spread throughout her body. While she wasn't as much of an exercise maniac as half of her teammates, she did enjoy the sensation of a workout well completed.

Before beginning her cooldown stretches Tenten clapped her hands together and bowed toward the training hall, saying a brief prayer of thanks to the _Cranston-Kemp Parahuman Economic Development Act_. Though she had been working hard at learning English over the last two weeks, Tenten still had trouble puzzling out the meaning of the phrase "targeted economic stimulus." As far as Lisa explained it, as long as they had a training program open to the public and didn't get into trouble with the law, they wouldn't have to worry about day to day living expenses.

So far only a team of non-parahuman personnel associated with the Protectorate had signed up for lessons. To be fair, she and Lisa hadn't started trying to sell their services to the general public yet. Lisa claimed she had a plan. She was confident that they would, if not break even, at least do well enough to keep their government subsidies.

Tenten still shook her head when she thought about it. Paying shinobi just to stay out of trouble. And not even executing them when they broke the law. What a world.

Tenten had also spent the last two weeks familiarizing herself with the local shinobi. Parahumans, rather. Through a combination of Lisa's coaching and her own scouting she was confident in recognizing most of the prominent parahumans on sight. She was also starting to come around to the idea that Lisa had been right in her description of the Protectorate. Tenten had happened to observe a clash between the Protectorate and one of the local gangs-the rather grandiosely titled Empire-and was stunned when the Protectorate completely failed to use lethal force. Even when the gang members were getting away. It was baffling.

Seeing that confrontation lent some weight to Lisa's claim that the Protectorate was controlled by a civilian run organization, the PRT. It explained the soft behavior. Tenten was still skeptical of the further claim that the PRT itself reported only to a civilian government comprised of people who were elected to their roles. Especially when Lisa told her that all adults were eligible to vote and nobody was punished for supporting the losing candidate.

The whole system just didn't make sense. Even so, she found it hard to avoid the conclusion that she had put her friend through a lot of unnecessary stress. It had all worked out in the end, but she still felt a little guilty.

Lisa had also come through in finding a training hall they could afford with their government loan. The previous owner had died in a tragic fire that did a lot of cosmetic damage to the building, but it was structurally sound. The downstairs training area was well suited for the classes Tenten would be teaching. The living area on the second floor was more than big enough for the two of them. And the large, private backyard was perfectly suited for Tenten's own training. All in all, Lisa struck gold.

Tenten really felt that she owed it to Lisa to put her all into developing her training regimen.

Speaking of which... Tenten squinted up at the sun as she straightened up out of her final stretch. Looked like it was about that time. Bending over, she scooped up a handful of small rocks. As she stood up she casually tossed them upwards, sending them to rattle against a window overlooking the yard. That done, she dusted off her hands before walking over to stand before a training post.

The post was a simple wooden log that Tenten had driven into the ground. Standing at about her height, it was twelve inches in diameter and as yet unmarked by the rigors of training. She studied it for a moment before taking a breath and drawing her sword.

Tenten had never cared for the delicate weapons favored by most kunoichi. Her chosen blade was the length of her forearm and unusually broad. The weight was comfortable in her hands, although she hardly noticed it after so many years of training. The blade itself widened from the hilt for nearly the entire length of the sword, only swooping in to form a stabbing tip near the very end. In combat she would carry a second blade in her off hand to use as a shield. For this training exercise one was enough.

She drew on her chakra and trickled a bit of it into the blade as she drew back to strike. Her weapon wasn't properly forged to really take advantage of her chakra, but her efforts would provide some momentary reinforcement. Another flexing of chakra improved her own physical abilities. As soon as her strength reached its peak she launched a flat horizontal chop near the top of the training post.

The blade initially bit into the training post with ease. It started to stall when it was most of the way through. Tenten dug deep and finished the strike with a second surge of power, managing to rip the blade all the way through the log and send a disk of wood flying.

Tenten snapped out her off hand and sent a specially prepared kunai chasing after the disk. It tore through the air before embedding itself in its target. A quick tug on the attached wire brought both kunai and disk down to the ground without putting another hole in the fence surrounding the property.

Another tug brought the disk to her hands. Tenten examined it with a frown. As expected, a little more than half of the disk had been cleanly separated from the training post. From the halfway point onward the cut grew increasingly rough until it was a splintered mess for the last quarter or so. At the far side of the disk she had even managed to rip off an inch of bark from below the point where she had struck.

Tenten put the kunai away and tossed the disk to the side before sitting down on the ground. Crossing her legs, she laid the blade of her sword across her knees. After a few deep breaths to calm her mind, she began to meditate.

 _At twelve years old, Tenten was convinced that sensei was the strongest shinobi in the world. After Lady Tsunade, maybe, but she was out wandering the world fighting bandits and healing people. Sensei was right here, looking right at her._

 _He'd asked her to stay back after announcing that their team had passed its genin exam. The two of them now stood alone in the training ground, looking at each other over one of the craters left behind from the test._

 _"Lee is well suited to inherit my style. Neji will follow his family's teachings," he said. "You will have to find a different path."_

 _Tenten nodded. "I'm good at throwing weapons. I can support my teammates from a distance."_

 _"Nonsense! I expect you to become a splendid kunoichi," her sensei said, shooting her what she was already starting to think of as Maito Gai's Patented Thumbs-Up in all capital letters. "You will fight along with your teammates at times, of course, but you should also have a combat style that suits you at all ranges."_

 _Tenten didn't have anything to say to that. She appreciated the vote of confidence, naturally, but she couldn't see herself going toe to toe with Neji or even Lee in close combat._

 _"You said that you admire Lady Tsunade," he continued. "Do you know the source of her strength?"_

 _Tenten furrowed her brow in thought. "Isn't it chakra control?"_

 _Tenten's own control wasn't good enough to become a medic. She was far from being able to replicate Tsunade's signature technique._

 _"It is a very complex chakra technique," he said, "but it would not function if she did not have such a wonderful understanding of strength itself."_

 _Tenten nodded. She was always interested in learning new facts about Tsunade, though she wasn't quite sure where her sensei was going with this._

 _"Your sword," he said, holding out his hand._

 _Tenten drew the blade from her side and handed it over. It had seen a bit of use during the test, though in truth Tenten was a much less effective fighter once the range closed to the point that the sword was useful._

 _"What is the purpose of a sword?" he asked._

 _Tenten thought for a moment. "I don't know, sensei. What?"_

 _He smiled at her before handing back the sword. "Think about it before our next meeting."_

 _The next time she'd seen him she'd proclaimed that the purpose of the sword was to protect her friends. He'd just smiled and said that the answer was right if it was true for her._

 _Over the next year she researched exotic sword katas. She read every legend she could get her hands on associated with the sword. Her sensei would never fully accept or reject any answer she suggested to him, and her use of the sword never showed any particular improvement._

 _When inspiration struck it came from her practice with throwing weapons. As much as she enjoyed honing her craft she never spent much time on trick shots. She preferred to refine her technique to remove any wasted motion and send her weapon directly at the target._

 _One throw. One path. One straight line. One target. One hit._

 _It took her months to refine away every extraneous thought she had about the sword. Stripped to the essentials, the purpose of the sword was to cut._

 _One strike. One motion. One path. One cut._

Tenten opened her eyes. A wisp of chakra floated into the sword, allowing her to impose her will on a tiny part of the world. She stood and readied to strike. An astute observer might have noticed the slightest shimmer along the cutting edge of the blade. Tenten swiped her sword at the training post with a relaxed and almost casual demeanor. It passed through the post without slowing, to no visible effect on the post itself.

Tenten looked down and smiled. Then frowned, as the shimmering edge disappeared with her loss of concentration. Sheathing the sword, she lifted another wooden disk off the top of the training post. The revealed wood was glossy and smooth. She ran her finger along it without feeling a single splinter.

Legend had it that the Sage of Six Paths had been able to use his sword to cut the distance between himself and his destination. He could travel from one side of the Elemental Countries to the other in seconds. If that could be done then it certainly ought to be possible to cut open a path between worlds. Tenten hoped Lisa was right and making her way home was just a matter of earning enough money, but she was never one to rely completely on the efforts of others.

Tenten bit her lip, almost overcome with a sudden urge to laugh at herself. Sure, she'd make her way home. She'd just have to master a lost legendary technique, then improve it. No big deal! Look how far she'd come already: after years of effort she had mastered a devastating attack that she could use against any opponent who was kind enough to let her meditate until she was ready without disrupting her concentration.

She took a deep breath and centered herself, dismissing the negative thoughts. As long as she was moving forward along the correct path she would reach her destination eventually. There was no need to compare herself to others or to try to calculate how much farther she had to go. The only thing for her to do was to walk forward. One path. One goal. One step at a time.

She'd get there eventually.

Tenten shook herself, putting thoughts of her own training to the side. Time to see if Lisa had managed to get up more or less on her own this morning.

She headed inside, kicking off her sandals and changing into house slippers before pausing for a moment to admire the training hall. The repairs to the floor were finally done. The whole thing was covered with a fine woven mat that Tenten associated with hoity-toity places like the Hyuuga compound. Most shinobi training was done outdoors where there was room to move around and damaging the environment wasn't such a big deal. For teaching beginners, though, this would be perfect.

Tenten pulled herself away and padded up the stairs, not making any particular effort to make noise or to be silent. She paused for a heartbeat in front of the door decorated with a stylized drawing of a smiling face, then slid it open and sighed at the all too expected sight: a blonde head of hair sticking out of a cocoon of blankets. Tenten walked inside and took a hold of the edge of the blanket. A quick snap of her arms unwrapped Lisa, who was sent spinning into the air until she came to a halt when Tenten took hold of her by the back of her collar and the seat of her pants.

Lisa had learned to wear sturdy clothing to bed after their first night in the training hall.

For all the violence of the movement Lisa was remarkably unaffected. Her eyes still weren't fully in focus as she craned her neck to look at Tenten.

"Five more minutes?"

"You say that every time."

Tenten turned and headed out of the room and down the stairs, lugging Lisa's half-asleep body along with her. They were halfway down before Lisa voiced her next complaint.

"Do we have to do this? I'm a thinker, not a fighter," Lisa said. "I was only ever in danger, like, one time."

Tenten looked down at her while she searched for the right words. After a moment she gave up and slipped back into her native tongue. " _If you get killed, even just once, it would bother me very much_."

After that Lisa limited herself to incoherent grumbling for a while until they actually entered the main room.

"I didn't even hit the snooze button today."

"I gave you a fifteen minute warning."

"I didn't-"

One side of the room was covered with thick foam mats. The intention was to have a safe spot for beginners to learn to fall. Tenten took advantage of this setup to unceremoniously toss Lisa across the room. Lisa's complaint turned into an undignified squawk mid-flight, but to her credit the girl had learned how to land well. She tucked her head and rolled over her shoulder before popping to her feet and spinning to face Tenten.

"I'm up! I'm up!" Lisa announced. "Don't throw anything!"

Tenten crossed her arms over her chest. "Show me what I have been teaching you."

Lisa began performing the first set of the Academy's introductory kata without any further ado. Her performance was smooth and efficient. Shockingly accurate, really. She didn't have the strength or speed to complete every move to absolute perfection, but her comprehension of each move was solid. Academy students typically required three months to approach mastery of the kata, but Lisa had it down cold in two weeks. She obviously had a long way to go before she'd be able to hold her own in an actual fight, but her bloodline had truly given her a monstrous boost.

Lisa finished up and Tenten remained silent. Lisa grinned, knowing what that meant.

"Pretty good, right?"

Tenten nodded.

"So can I go back to-"

"Now we have more time!" Tenten interrupted, giving Lisa a thumbs up, "We can do more endurance training today!"

ooOoo

Lisa groaned as she fiddled with the controls of her very expensive office chair. Surely there had to be some configuration that would let her sit comfortably. She gently let down the walls on her power.

 _Nope. You are sore in your everything._

Some days it just didn't pay to get thrown out of bed. Lisa gave up on the chair and turned her attention back to her computer. She felt her lips quirk up into a grin at the video on display in the corner of her monitor. The live stream from the training room downstairs showed Tenten, a bell tied to her hip for some reason, easily evading the attacks of the three men sent by the PRT.

Something about shared misery just made her smile every time. The only difference was that she was starting to get used to Tenten's training sessions by now, while the PRT grunts were enjoying their first day.

On screen, it looked for a moment like they had Tenten cornered. Then something happened that almost looked like a glitch in the video. Lisa could hear the loud thud echoing up from downstairs at the same time that the video came back into focus to show Tenten standing on the other side of the room while the three PRT men were on the ground after piling into each other.

Lisa shook her head and minimized the video. As entertaining as it was, she'd have the recording to watch later. She had some work to do of her own right now.

It turned out that she might have been a wee bit optimistic when she told Tenten they'd be able to get her home if they earned enough money. It was true that rumor had it that Toybox had their hands on some sweet interdimensional tech. Unfortunately, it was also true that cold hard fact had it that Toybox wouldn't even let you look at their full catalog unless you showed up along with somebody substantial vouching for you.

For that matter, it wasn't like they were rolling in cash. Lisa had squeezed the government for everything she could and just barely came away with enough to secure a burned down building in a shitty neighborhood. Things would get better once they had more paying customers, but they'd have to do something pretty dramatic to drum up bribe-a-tinker-into-forgetting-his-scruples kind of money.

So for the past two weeks Lisa had been busy. When she wasn't trolling PHO or trolling the PRT, she spent her time trolling the internet, looking for some very particular information. Today she was going to cash in on the fruits of that labor.

First she fired up her virtual desktop. Her only link to it was filtered through so many cut outs and redirects that she was a little worried about noticeable light speed lag showing up on her upcoming call. Nothing she could do about that, though. Lisa put on her headset and started the dialing program. When all was said and done she dialed a local call to a phone nominally in Bogota, Colombia.

As expected, a message came up indicating that the number was out of service. The recorded message had three barely discernible flickers in sound quality. After the third one Lisa smashed down on her mouse button to hit the virtual pound key, then quickly dialed in a ten digit number.

There was a click. Another click. Finally, the sound of a phone ringing, cut off halfway through the first ring.

"Speak."

Lisa's grin widened. "So you are a guy. I half expected that the whole Number Man thing was going to be a big head fake."

A pause. _Mild surprise._

"What do you want?"

Lisa picked up absolutely nothing from his tone of voice.

"I'm a big fan of your work," Lisa said. "Can't a girl just call to talk to her idol?"

"No."

"Fine," Lisa said, pouting despite knowing it was futile, "put me on the spot, why don't you. I was wondering if you could use an intern."

Another pause.

"You think you have what it takes to work for me?"

 _Mildly amused_.

Despite herself, Lisa felt a flicker of anger. She kept it out of her voice as best she could. "I found this number, didn't I?"

"That earned you a moment of my time, nothing more," came the reply. "An intern, hmm..."

The sound of fingers tapping against a desk came faintly over the line. _Finger taps timed to a Fibonacci series_.

Lisa held her tongue. The Number Man didn't seem like the type to go for parlor tricks.

"I suppose if you cleared the criminal capes out of Brockton Bay I might find you interesting."

Lisa was about to say something when he spoke again.

"And do be quiet about it. I could never hire somebody famous."

"Fine," Lisa snapped, only to find that the line had gone dead.

She closed out of the virtual connection, then set about clearing all trace of it from her hard drive. While her helper programs were running she disconnected the device she had been using to connect to the Internet from the computer, opened it up to extract the SIM card contained within, and snapped the card in half before setting it under the powerful electromagnet she kept by her bedside and flicking a switch.

She was halfway through her routine for securing her anonymity when she realized she never had said she was from Brockton Bay. Lisa paused for a moment, her hands frozen on the keyboard. Had she just started some kind of Thinker-off with somebody she couldn't outsmart?

Psshhh. No way.

Lisa chuckled, shaking her head. All this physical exercise must be getting to her. She had to get her head in the game and figure out what to do about the Number Man's offer.

She wasn't worried about his sincerity. Everything she'd been able to dig up had suggested that the Number Man didn't bother lying. He didn't need to. He also didn't joke. Opinions differed on whether that was a result of his trigger or just an aspect of his personality. Either way, she was confident that the offer was real. The question was whether it was worth it.

Cleaning up Brockton Bay without drawing any attention was a tall order. Not only did it strike her as impossible at first blush, it seemed like the kind of thing that could go very violently wrong at the first bad break. She'd have to talk things over with Tenten to get her perspective.

As if on cue, a small notice light mounted on top of her computer started blinking. Lisa stood, stretching in another futile attempt to relieve some of her soreness. Looked like she'd just have to fake it. She put on her trench coat, hat, wig, mask, and grin before sauntering out of her room and heading down the stairs.

She reached the training room to find more or less what she had expected to see. Tenten was seated cross-legged on one side of the room, her breathing even and not a hair out of place. The PRT personnel were collapsed in disarray on the other side of the room. Behind them was the camera the PRT had insisted on having present at the lesson to ensure that Tenten wasn't up to some nefarious scheme. Next to that was the camera that Lisa had put in place so that the PRT couldn't engage in any nefarious blackmail.

The three students did pull themselves together enough to pay attention when Lisa walked in. As they had explained before the lesson began, Tenten was comfortable enough with English to give directions in the midst of a training session. Lisa had to be on hand to translate for anything more in depth.

Tenten fixed her students with a serious look and made sure that she had their full attention before she spoke.

" _None of you are particularly talented. If you work hard and follow my directions with dedication, it's possible that within a few years you will be able to flee safely from a fight and seek help from somebody useful_."

Lisa translated her words faithfully. The students looked like they would have been more indignant if they had more energy.

" _No matter how long you train, I doubt you will ever be competent to achieve important mission objectives on your own. It's possible that another trainer might do more for you. I apologize for my own incompetence_."

Lisa translated again, a little torn on how to portray Tenten's tone at the end. She eventually settled on trying to stay as matter-of-fact as possible.

" _As it stands, the PRT has paid in advance for four weeks of training. I will of course make myself available as long as I am being paid. However, my recommendation would be that we switch the lesson to something more practical, like flower arrangement_."

This time, Lisa couldn't help but shoot a question at Tenten before translating. " _Flower arrangement?_ "

Tenten flushed, just barely. " _Florists make a good living. It's also safe_."

Lisa succumbed to temptation and let her power of the leash. _First in her class in flower arrangement. Proud. Embarrassed._

Lisa shook her head with a grin and translated the original statement. As she expected, all three of the students leapt to their feet.

"No way! We'll stick with the unarmed combat training. Whatever it takes."

Lisa turned back to Tenten to see that no translation was necessary. She was already rising to her feet with a faint smile on her face.

"All right, warm up done," Tenten said, giving her students a thumbs up. "Now, a little serious."

ooOoo

Emily Piggot, director of the PRT East Northeast, paused the video. As she expected, Assault could hardly wait until the recorded playback had stopped to pitch in his two cents.

"I think it's safe to say she's not trying to sweet talk our guys out from under us."

Piggot sighed. She took a moment to look around the room. All hands meetings with the Protectorates entire local roster were rare. That meant that they tended to drag on thanks to the endless pile of vital reports that "everybody ought to weigh in on." She had scheduled the matter of the new local rogues for the beginning of the meeting. The good news was that everybody was fresh and still seemed to be paying attention. The bad news was that she would still have a lot of meeting left over even after this pain in her ass was dealt with.

"You know," Piggot said, "I could probably find room in the budget for some flower arranging lessons, if you insist."

That brought a chuckle from Battery. Velocity and Dauntless also seemed amused, while Assault accepted the ribbing in good humor. Only Armsmaster and Miss Militia refused to treat the moment with anything but the utmost seriousness.

"How'd they do after the lesson, anyway?" Assault asked.

All eyes turned to Armsmaster. He was a terrible source for office gossip but an excellent source for the official story. He took a moment in thought before he spoke, likely checking over the report using his visor.

"All three came up clean after passing through the Master/Stranger protocols," Armsmaster said. "They each reported themselves to be, quote, 'unbelievably sore.'"

"So she's just running them into the ground?" Dauntless asked. "That won't do anybody any good."

"No," Armsmaster said, an odd tone entering his voice. "Each of them was perfectly sore. Every muscle group was exercised precisely to the point where any further exercise would have caused muscle breakdown from overuse. Not a scrap of useful effort was left over at the end of the lesson. In a way, it's... beautiful."

A hush fell over the room. Director Piggot took a moment to look around for somebody to be the voice of reason before realizing that, as usual, she was it.

"No," she said, her tone brooking no compromise.

"But, director-" Armsmaster began.

"No. I am absolutely not signing off on the leader of our branch of the Protectorate taking lessons for an extended period of time under two unknown thinkers," Director Piggot said. "And that goes double if you had some cockamamie idea about sneaking into the open classes in your civilian identity."

Piggot waved her hand, cutting off his reply, and did her best to ignore the unsettling sight that was a sulking Armsmaster as she turned to address the room. "General thoughts on our new rogues?"

There was a moment of silence before Velocity spoke up. "Like you said, this Tenten is a combat thinker for sure. I've seen those guys fight in tournaments. They're good. She was just toying with them. Most of what she was doing wasn't about strength or speed. She was just in complete control of everything that happened."

General murmurs of agreement swept around the table.

"You know, she reminds me a bit of Hookwolf," Dauntless said, raising his hands to ward off the inevitable reaction. "Hear me out, hear me out. I've seen videos of his arena matches. He just has that look about him. Like, 'anything you can do, I've seen it already, and I don't even have to pay attention to take you apart.' I see some of that in her."

That brought a momentary hush down over the room.

"At least with Tenten the 'taking apart' is only metaphorical," Battery said, looking to lighten the mood.

"She's killed before," Miss Militia said. "Many times."

Director Piggot felt the familiar stirrings of a tension headache. This was exactly what she didn't need from one of her more reliable capes.

"Have you been able to identify any unsolved murders in the three day window between her arrival and her visit to the Rig?" Piggot asked.

Miss Militia shook her head. "There are several suspicious missing person cases."

Dauntless beat her to the punch. "Isn't this the girl we figured for a Case 53? You think she showed up here with no memories and immediately went on a killing spree that she managed to completely hide from us and the BBPD?"

"The killings could have happened before," Miss Militia said, shifting a little in her seat. "Some deeds leave a mark on your soul. Even if you remove the memory, the scars remain."

Generally speaking, Director Piggot trusted Miss Militia's judgment. She'd already gone above and beyond in terms of dedicating surveillance resources to an unremarkable pair of rogue capes. At some point, though, enough was enough. Tenten had been unfailingly courteous, unnecessarily forthcoming, and utterly uninterested in running around on the street engaging in amateur law enforcement.

As far as Director Piggot was concerned, the perfect cape was a cape who never created any problems for her. Tenten was looking pretty damn good so far.

"Enough. Show me a body. Show me any kind of crime," Piggot said, "and we'll prosecute as appropriate. Which should be simple since she's not even bothering with a secret identity. Until she breaks the law, does everybody remember my rule about borrowing trouble by picking fights with friendly capes?"

She had to glare around the room a bit, but eventually the parahumans present recited in a desultory chorus: "Don't."

"Thank you," Director Piggot said. Glancing over, she saw that Armsmaster seemed to have recovered his equilibrium. "Armsmaster, your thoughts?"

"Her powers are hard to pin down," Armsmaster said, beginning with the facts as was his habit. "Everything meshes together. It's hard to pick out what's leverage and what's strength, what's reflexes and what's anticipation. Not to mention that we've yet to see her pushed to her limits. I'm not prepared to commit to a numerical rating at this time. However, I would recommend that non-parahuman personnel avoid conflict with her."

"As to her personality, I agree that something seems off," he continued. "If I had to put it to words, it's almost as if she's not a Case 53. On the other hand, some things we know about her don't make any sense unless she is a Case 53. I think the language is the key. I've put in a request for a visit from Arbiter. She'll have to meet with Tenten in order to learn the language. It could be a few months before we know more, unless the director chooses to expedite the request."

Director Piggot shook her head. As if she would call in a precious favor with Alexandria or Director Knox over such a trivial matter.

"In any event, all we can do is wait and see," Armsmaster said. "She at least seems to be more level headed than the average new cape."

There was a general chorus of agreement at that. Even Miss Militia gave a grudging nod.

Director Piggot wasn't particularly close to Armsmaster as a person. As far as she was concerned, though, the man's ability to summarize a discussion and achieve consensus in a meeting was more valuable than anything he did in his workshop.

"What about the other girl? The pure thinker?" Dauntless asked.

Piggot indicated to Armsmaster to answer the question. He nodded, then paused for a moment. No doubt reviewing his electronic records again.

"The initial assessment after her visit was she possesses at least a middle-tier general purpose thinker ability," Armsmaster said. "Top end undefined, pursuant to standard procedure."

"Since visiting the Rig," he began, before trailing off. He coughed lightly into his hand. When he continued speaking, it was obvious that he was doing his best to keep his tone as flat as possible.

"Since visiting the Rig, according to WEDGWG's best estimates, she spends approximately eighteen hours per day on Parahumans Online, splitting her time roughly equally between the shipping and versus forums. Her primary account skirts close to the line of a banning every day and we suspect, but can not prove, that she uses alternate accounts, several of which have been banned. She has also been teaching Tenten how to speak English and has donated several minutes of her time to help translate during lessons."

"She's a complete shut in?" Dauntless asked.

"Not exactly," Armsmaster said. He again seemed reluctant to go on, but couldn't avoid continuing. "She has returned two dogs and one cat to their original owners in response to children's lost pet posters. Her total earnings so far are $45 and a plate of homemade brownies."

"She actually took money from kids?" Dauntless asked.

"Hey, if you're good at something, never do it for free," Assault said, before wilting under Battery's glare. "... is what I would say if I weren't such a great role model. You know, for the kids."

"She also," Armsmaster said, ignoring the byplay, "sent us a bill. Her theory was that as Scion is equally likely to save a kitten from a tree as he is to put out a forest fire, reducing the number of pets in distress was a substantial contribution to the nation's disaster prevention efforts."

Director Piggot had to admit, if only to herself, that she had enjoyed the girl's chutzpah. Only for a moment until she had torn the purported bill to shreds and tossed it into the incinerator, but still.

"So this girl's freeloading off her teammate, freeloading off Uncle Sugar, and spends all day trolling either PHO or us?" Assault said, obviously near laughter. "I can't decide if she's the world's greatest thinker or the worst."

"Thinkers are notoriously difficult to pin down," Director Piggot said. "I was able to get a read from Appraiser. Yellow. Personally, I think it's a fifty-fifty chance she does something stupid in the next six months and comes running to join up so we'll clean up her mess."

That prompted some resigned shrugs around the room. For all that thinkers couldn't punch out a PRT transport, they were still able to create some spectacular fuck ups once they got rolling.

"All right. I'd say we're past the new cape feeling out period," Director Piggot said. "I'm drawing down the enhanced surveillance resources. Frankly, we need those men to get eyes on whatever the hell Squealer's been building out in the docks for the last month. We will keep a thinker watch on Tattletale to alert us to changes in her behavior. We will continue to assess our men after their training per Master/Stranger protocols. And we will keep an eye out for any upsurge in criminal activity that could be linked to Tenten."

Director Piggot paused for a long moment, taking the time to glare at every parahuman in the room. Even the most level headed of them would have been seen as a glory-seeking hothead back in her old unit. "I shouldn't have to say it, but absolutely do not go off half cocked because of a gut feeling or because you feel you have something to prove. If you see something suspicious, report it in. Work the system, people, and it will treat you right in the end."

Piggot flipped to the next page in her folder and barely held back a wince. "Next order of business: due to a computer error our recent restock of decaf coffee was ten times the usual allotment. Pursuant to PRT cost-saving regulations, we will be unable to replace it with regular until somebody drinks all of the surplus. This is going to be all hands on deck..."

ooOoo

 _AN2: Just to address the two bits of head canon that I've slipped in here. I'm always happy to hear about what people liked and disliked. On these two topics I'm not particularly interested in what anybody thinks is right or wrong. This is openly acknowledged head canon:_

 _The Cranston-Kemp Act: My take on canon is that the PRT takes a dim view of independent heroes (more so if they try to go undercover in villain teams) but is fairly copacetic with rogues. This would track the IRL relationship between cops and law-abiding gun owners (perfectly cordial) compared to cops and armed vigilantes (not so much). In addition, even if the PRT would rather have rogues sign up with the protectorate, the PRT is not the entire US government._

 _I absolutely believe that, absent a massive conspiracy operating behind the scenes, there would have been a bipartisan push to semi-openly bribe parahumans into becoming law abiding citizens. Yes, with guardrails around the release of tinkertech, biological artifacts, or the issuance of patents in general. I would expect to see generous subsidies aimed at parahuman "mom and pop" businesses in the name of "the American entrepreneurial spirit"/"providing opportunities for a troubled minority."_

 _It's just that Cauldron didn't need to strangle the program in the crib because capes are nigh-compelled by their personal demons to commit/fight crime and the sort that become rogues aren't the type to sign up for government programs. So the bill just kind of drifted along until a sufficiently shameless thinker decided to take advantage. What's going on here is a very generous small business loan that is dependent on their running a public facing business with a certain level of success._

 _If the attitude of the government really bothers you just imagine Tattletale plundered some Brockton Bay redevelopment promotion money that was earmarked for businesses starting up in bad neighborhoods._

 _Tenten's sword stuff: I like to fill in the gaps in what we know about mid-tier Naruto characters by imagining what they would look like at S-rank, drawing a line between that and what they looked like as genin, and figuring out where they are on that line. To me, an S-rank Tenten works best if she has a handle on xianxia style sword intent. In all honesty, an unstoppable, undodgeable, unblockable sword strike than can cut through anything just barely claws her up into S-rank territory. I think it's pretty sweet though, and it's a fairly flexible power up. The Narutoverse already has killing intent so other xianxia-isms slide in pretty easily, IMO._

 _The other obvious way to make Tenten S-rank would be to randomly drop S-rank weapons into her hands. That just seems silly to me._


	6. Chapter 6

_AN: A reviewer asked after the xianxia genre. I'm afraid there are a lot of bad stories in the genre and even the good stories generally go bad once they've gone on long enough. OTOH, it is largely free stories online. I thought World of Cultivation was a solid action-filled story for the first 400 chapters or so. The only real classic in the genre is Ze Tian Ji, or Way of Choices. Even that one I would recommend you treat as ending in chapter 666 in order to save yourself some frustration._

ooOoo

Tenten used her index finger to fidget with her collar. It didn't itch, but it seemed like it should. It had been a while since she'd worn anything but purely practical clothing.

She tore her eyes away from the mirror and looked at Lisa. "I have to wear a dress?"

"I'm afraid so," Lisa said, though her eyes seemed more amused than sympathetic. "Just be glad I talked them out of cosplay."

"Cosplay?" Tenten asked. She had been working hard on learning English in the month since she'd arrived in Brockton Bay, but her vocabulary still had many gaps.

"One of these days I'm going to teach you how to internet," Lisa said, running an appraising eye over Tenten's outfit. "There would have been a lot more frills."

"If you say so," Tenten said.

The styling of the dress at least somewhat tracked with her usual blouses, albeit with a somewhat tighter fit. The hemline fell to a little ways below her knee, with a slit that ran high enough not to impede her range of motion by much. A discreet pair of shorts worn underneath protected her modesty.

The most eye-catching part of the dress was the coloring. It was a bold royal blue, with details picked out in gold embroidery. The same gold color was used in the piping that ran along every hem. It wasn't the tackiest thing Tenten had ever worn, but it was certainly flashier than her everyday wear.

"Relax, you look good," Lisa said, patting her on the shoulder.

"Of course I look good," Tenten said. Say one thing about being on Maito Gai's team, say he kept you in good enough shape to wear skimpy clothing at any time. "I want to know the whole plan."

"Sorry, can't ruin the surprise. Authenticity sells," Lisa replied.

"Surprise?" Tenten said, raising an eyebrow. "Why tell me anything then?"

"I'll admit I sacrificed a little bit of authenticity in order to make sure nobody gets maimed. I stand by my decision," Lisa said, before fixing Tenten with a more serious look. "Now, what's really bothering you?"

Tenten hesitated for a moment. They had agreed to postpone this discussion for later but it was bothering her, and Lisa had asked.

"If we take Number Man's deal..." she began.

"Then this would all be a waste of time?" Lisa said, breaking in while Tenten was searching for a tactful way to put it.

Tenten hadn't been too upset to learn that traveling home wouldn't be quite so simple as just piling up enough money to pay for the trip. It made sense that there were other obstacles to overcome before she could travel between dimensions. What did bother her was Lisa's hesitation. Tenten had always been one to tackle problems head on once she knew what she had to do.

While she appreciated the work Lisa had done to secure their financial security, Tenten wasn't particularly interested in teaching the most basic of basics to talentless students who would never become shinobi. She was willing to do it. It was certainly better than becoming a common criminal just to eat. But given the alternative of a more direct path home, she was inclined to take it.

"I kill Merchants tonight," Tenten said. She'd refamiliarized herself with the gangs after learning of the Number Man's offer, looking at them with a new purpose in mind. The Merchants, at least, she was confident in taking on by herself.

"Probably," Lisa said. "What then? Take on the Empire capes the next day? Lung? Coil? Just keep attacking the city's criminals until they're dead or you are?"

Tenten shrugged. She could tell that Lisa didn't think much of her plan. The villains of Brockton Bay were powerful, true, but attack was easier than defense and surprise and aggression could go a long way. That wasn't the most important part of her thinking, though. "My friends think I'm dead. Need to get home soon."

"Remember that the whole point is to impress the Number Man so he'll help you out in order to hire me," Lisa said.

Tenten felt a pang of guilt at that. While she still had a deeper bond with her friends from Konoha, she had grown close to Lisa over the last month. If they carried out the Number Man's request is such a slapdash manner he might feel obligated by his word to help Tenten get home without feeling any residual goodwill toward Lisa. For Lisa to be left by herself to deal with the aftermath of her partner's killing spree wouldn't be fair to her.

"It would defeat the whole purpose of earning you a ticket home if you get killed doing it," Lisa said. "Do you think your friends want you to get home soon or to get home safely?"

Tenten looked down, unable to meet Lisa's eyes after the surprising change of emphasis. She hadn't expected Lisa to be so completely focused on Tenten's safety. She was right, too. As much as she wanted to see her friends again and reassure them that she was all right, they would all want her to put her own safety ahead of their peace of mind. Maybe taking a while to finish the Number Man's mission wouldn't be too bad.

Tenten rubbed at a bit of dust that had gotten into her eye somehow.

"If we work with the Number Man, then we'll take our time and do it right," Lisa said, tactfully ignoring Tenten's brief loss of composure. "Meanwhile..."

Tenten dragged her attention back to the immediate future and sighed. "We work with pair of wasted talent idiots."

"Yep," Lisa said, popping the p, "because they will be doing what I tell them to do, instead of following their own stupid instincts."

"If you say so," Tenten said.

"And I do. You should probably get going, don't want to be late."

Tenten rather enjoyed doing the grocery shopping. She hadn't at first. When Lisa had taken her to the massive store located near to their hotel room shortly after their trip to the Rig it had been a completely alien experience. Now, her increasing comfort with the local language and currency made it a little easier to shop every time. Also, their local market had comforting echoes of Konoha that hadn't been present in the overly sterile box they had shopped at that first time.

Apparently that last bit wasn't entirely a good thing. Lisa's theory was that the Elemental Countries that were Tenten's home corresponded loosely to a region on Earth Bet known as Asia. Which was fine in and of itself, but in Brockton Bay the neighborhoods that catered to Asian tastes were firmly under the control of the ABB, one of the more prominent gangs in the city. Lisa figured that it wouldn't be long after their classes opened to the public before the ABB would come by looking for their cut.

That seemed to Tenten like a fine reason to get started moving toward their goal of wiping out the gangs, but Lisa claimed she had a better plan. She just didn't want to spell it out, which Tenten was starting to suspect was Lisa-speak for her plan being to wing it when the time came.

Tenten put such thoughts to the back of her mind and focused on picking up the necessities. Rice. Eggs. Noodles. Fresh fish, the liveliest one in the tank. Spices that looked familiar but the locals called by funny names. Soy sauce. Tenten was quite proud of herself for handing over the appropriate set of bills the first time once the cashier told her the total cost.

All in all, Tenten was feeling good and had just about put the primary purpose of this trip out of her mind as she made her way home. Then she ran face first in to an invisible wall.

The impact was more startling than painful. Tenten took a step back and narrowed her eyes at the tiny ripples in the air, already disappearing, that marked the point of impact. She was just getting over the surprise and starting to consider how to respond when a voice called out from her side.

"I have been wandering the earth searching for strong opponents. Are you what I've been looking for?"

Tenten turned her head as she parsed the speech. She thought she'd translated the words correctly, but when she put the whole sentence together they didn't quite make sense.

She lost track of her train of thought when she caught sight of what must have been Uber. From what she'd been told she hadn't expected him to have many redeeming qualities, but the pictures she'd seen hadn't shown off his arms. Standing in front of her, he was wearing what looked to Tenten like a very formal and traditional training outfit that had had its sleeves torn off. It wasn't a look she had seen before, but he was making it work.

A red headband to keep his hair out of his eyes and a matching black belt and domino mask completed the outfit. Tenten realized she had been staring, and forcibly turned her attention back to what he had said.

"You... challenge me?"

Rather than respond verbally, he simply held his hands up before him in a ready stance. No immediate flaws leapt out at Tenten's eyes. This might be a decent challenge after all. She carefully set her grocery bag down on the ground, then reached out to confirm the location of the invisible wall. On a hunch, she kicked a couple of pebbles to check for any other walls lurking around the battlefield.

As it turned out, she and Uber were standing in a corridor defined by a pair of invisible force fields. The corridor was broad enough that Tenten wouldn't quite be able to touch both sides with her feet at the same time. A third wall blocked off her avenue of retreat away from Uber. She had to assume that a fourth wall lurked somewhere behind Uber, who was currently standing about ten paces away from her. The fight would be more cramped than most shinobi battles, but her sensei had trained her to fight in such conditions.

He'd trained their team to fight in most conditions, really.

Her quick look around also showed a small crowd gathering to watch the upcoming spar. If Lisa's plan was to create interest in their training by putting on a show it looked to be a mild success. Tenten would have thought that putting on a properly scheduled fight in an actual arena would have drawn more interest, though. As it was, all of the audience together barely amounted to the total number of students they were hoping to have sign up for classes.

She knew Uber and Leet liked to publicize their exploits on the internet, the communications device that Lisa used to argue with people all day long. Tenten didn't really think that would appeal to many people, though. Who would rather spend all day staring at a screen instead of pursuing healthy self-improvement or at least enjoying a sunny day? Tenten's best guess was that there were maybe a couple hundred people in the city who would bother with the internet, and she felt that was being generous. It hardly seemed like the kind of thing their target market would be interested in, either.

Well, no matter. Tenten enjoyed exchanging pointers with a competent sparring partner even without any larger purpose being served.

Finished looking around, Tenten cracked her neck and set herself in a ready stance. She met Uber's eyes and they both moved forward as if at some unseen command.

Though neither one of them was moving in a rush they closed to striking distance in no time at all. Tenten tried a jab, then a quick combination to test the waters. He slipped her punches and tried a probing strike of his own. They went back and forth a few times, neither able to land a solid hit on the other. Tenten gradually began increasing the speed and intensity of her attacks, and Uber began to give ground.

He stumbled on a rock as he was moving backwards. Not badly, just enough to put him slightly off balance, but it was all she needed. Tenten feinted low to force him to over commit while he was still recovering then sent a straight right hand smashing directly into his face. The contact felt more like hitting an iron plate than human flesh. Uber stumbled back a few steps before resetting his stance. While he had been moved by the strike, he didn't show any of the disorientation she expected to see after she punched someone in the face.

Tenten stared in shock for a few heartbeats. He shouldn't have access to a body-hardening technique. No, she realized, as she thought back to what she knew of him his partner was a Tinker. So while a strong body-hardening fighter could be almost impossible to put down, Uber was using some kind of fantastic technology that... could be impossible to take down. Well, all she could do was try her best.

She got her head back into the game as Uber stepped forward once more. This time she allowed him to land a punch on her shoulder in exchange for the opportunity to grab onto his wrist. She could feel the hit, but it wasn't enough to do her any real damage. A reasonable trade for the chance to put him into a submission hold. That was what she thought, anyways, until her hand slid off of Uber's arm like it was made of ice.

He didn't give her an opportunity to recover. While Tenten was still off balance from her unexpected failure to latch on to him he held both hands out, cupping them together at the wrist. An instant later her vision filled with blue.

Her first thought when the glowing sphere jumped from Uber's hands was that it was some kind of rasengan. That proved incorrect when it hit her and she didn't die immediately. After that she didn't have time for much conscious thought at all.

The first contact caught her completely off guard. Without any active use of chakra to cushion the impact she could feel pain blossoming throughout her body as she was knocked off her feet and into the air. Deeply ingrained reflexes had her circulating chakra a split second later just in time for a second distinct impact to keep pushing her backwards. It was as though the original sphere was trying to push through her body and each individual segment of it hit her on the way by. The follow up hits didn't hurt in the same way as the first but she couldn't do anything to arrest herself in midair.

Tenten couldn't have said how long the barrage lasted, but by the time it finished she was falling to the ground headfirst while Uber stood ten paces away. She was able to get her arms up and turn her fall into a relatively controlled handspring, landing on her feet facing her opponent. He was in his original ready position, looking at her with a curious expression on his face.

She turned to the side and spat out the mix of blood and mucus that had been dislodged by the hit. Her heartbeat started to pick up and Tenten's fists clenched a little tighter as she felt the telltale signs of adrenaline surging through her body. This was her first real spar in a long time. The teaching sessions with the PRT guys were fun, but there was something about taking a solid hit that made everything snap into focus. Tenten could feel a smile creeping across her face.

Uber responded by repeating his attack. Now that she had some distance from it Tenten could see that the blue sphere appeared in front of him-with no obvious chakra usage-before shooting in her direction. The giant sphere scraped the ground as it went along and was nearly as broad as the corridor containing their fight. She couldn't dodge to the side and she couldn't go under it, so there was only one thing to do.

She jumped.

She had been confident that she could jump over the attack, giving her a chance to close the distance while Uber was still recovering from whatever he had done to summon forth the energy ball. The first time he had used it the sphere had moved very quickly, so it should have passed her by with plenty of room to spare. Unfortunately, as Tenten neared the apex of her jump she could see that this attack was moving much slower than the first. If she didn't do something she would land right in the teeth of the attack.

Fortunately, she'd been knocked out of the center of the corridor earlier. Tenten circulated chakra at her feet before lashing out at the side wall. The chakra was able to interact with the energy of the wall to give her just enough traction to push up and out. She bounced towards the other wall and repeated the process. This time she kicked off hard enough to put herself into a spin. She was well clear of Uber's attack and was set to crash down on his position with a flying axe kick.

Uber recovered quicker than she expected, leaping back out of range. Tenten did her best to save the landing. Instead of her heel hitting Uber's shoulder while her body was parallel to the ground it ended up hitting the street at about a forty-five degree angle. Her heel swung freely through the concrete, digging out a trench as she caught herself on her hands and gently touched down with her other knee in a sprinter's stance.

She looked up in time to see Uber launch himself into a flying spin kick. The motion was just... wrong. He flew up into the air higher than he should have from the effort he put into the leap, and he moved horizontally while he spun as though unaffected by gravity.

Tenten didn't have time to think it over, though. She dove forward, laying flat out inches above the ground as she escaped underneath the range of Uber's attack. Rather than let herself come to a stop naturally she slammed both hands into the ground. Forces that would cause compression fractures up and down a civilian's body only caused her arms to flex slightly as she let the energy store up before using it to spring back to her feet.

Uber was just landing as she spun to face him. Tenten darted in close before launching a rising kick aimed directly at the point of his chin. He recovered well enough to push on her leg as it screamed upwards, shifting her kick slightly to one side and his head to the other. Tenten's smile widened.

Instead of bringing her leg down with force she simply bent it to the side, hooking her ankle around the back of his neck. Using that as a pivot she launched herself up in the air. For a brief, frozen moment Tenten's body was parallel to the ground, her ankles crossed with Uber's neck caught between her calves. His hands were just starting to rise as Uber realized he needed to get himself free.

Then Tenten gave a savage wrench with her core muscles, levering her upper body up while yanking down with her legs. The invisible armor kept Uber's head attached to his shoulders, but he was pulled forward and down while the momentum swung Tenten around towards his back. She ended up more or less riding him down as he crashed face first into the ground.

The impact shook her loose just enough so that he began sliding out from under her. She landed a palm strike on his lower spine that hit hard enough to lift her to her feet, but he tumbled away from her follow up foot stomp. Again, his motion didn't seem to correspond to what he was doing with his muscles. Tenten frowned down at the spiderweb of cracks by her foot, a bit upset with the missed strike.

Uber's forward roll ended with him coming to his feet well out of melee range. His eyes were a bit wild as he turned to face her. He took a breath and the tension seemed to drain out of his body.

"You are quick and clever," he said. "But do you dare to match me strength for strength, one technique to decide the match?"

Tenten just held out her leading hand, palm upward, before gesturing at him to give her his best shot.

He crouched as though he were about to throw an uppercut into thin air. When he moved, though, it was no simple punch. A corona of flame surrounded his entire body. The flames near his hand thickened into the shape of a dragon, rising and falling in a spiral as he threw his whole body into a series of spinning uppercuts. He was closing the distance with her at the same time, somehow, moving forward smoothly as he spun like a top.

Tenten held her position for the space of a heartbeat. She kept her eyes fixed on Uber's approaching form and made sure that she understood the rhythm of his attack before she moved. She drew deep on her chakra reserves and pushed the energy through her entire body, toughening herself up as the crucial moment arrived.

She took two steps forward. This left her body just out of reach of the flaming dragon as Uber drew close. She was buffeted by his fiery aura but the unfocused flames could hardly affect her now. Channeling her energy into a roundhouse kick, she snapped off her attack counter to the direction of Uber's spin, catching him squarely on the side of his rib cage.

The hit was solid, but Tenten could instantly feel that it wouldn't be enough. She focused on speed, drawing back her leg from the knee and launching a second kick. This kick lacked the power of the first, but it followed so closely on its heels that Uber's body hadn't yet been flung away from her by the initial impact. The second strike was also stopped by that invisible shield, but there was some definite give in it this time. Tenten moved with all of the speed she could bring to bear to muster up a third kick, striking cleanly in the same location.

Her foot crashed through the invisible shield like a knife through tofu. In the split second after impact Tenten realized she was about to kick a hole right through her sparring partner and did her best to pull the power from the hit. She still felt something give as Uber was flung away from her to land unceremoniously in a heap on the ground.

Tenten froze, foot still extended from her final strike. A hush fell over the battlefield, broken only by the echoing whip cracks of her combination kick. She held her breath as Uber lay ominously still.

After an eternity that may have only lasted a few seconds, Uber pulled himself off the ground with a groan. Tenten suppressed her sigh of relief as she resumed a neutral stance. He was clearly favoring his side but didn't seem to be seriously hurt. He managed a pained smile as he gave her a polite bow.

"I know when I'm beaten. Perhaps I'll do better next time."

He wanted to challenge her again? She'd had fun, but she needed to establish some ground rules.

"You lose challenge," she said, pointing at him, then pointing at a hill just visible to the north of the city. "Climb Captain's Hill one hundred time before challenge again."

He cocked his head. The smile on his face turned a little more genuine, but before he could say anything a red blur flew in from above. The blur resolved itself into a weedy looking man in a red military uniform surrounded by a corona of lightning. He put his hand on Uber's shoulder and there was a flash of light. When Tenten's vision cleared, they were gone.

Tenten smiled. It had been a good fight. She hadn't been going all out from the start, but after watching the flashy exit she knew he hadn't been either. It was a valuable lesson.

She had long since realized that Earth Bet didn't have a systematic understanding of the use of chakra. Thus, while many individuals had terrifyingly powerful bloodline limits, they didn't have the solid foundation that would let them use their talent to the utmost. Tenten had assumed that her own broad skill set would give her an advantage.

Which was true. But it only went so far. A bloodline talent was still a bloodline talent, after all. Somebody who did nothing but hone their particular talent would naturally be able to use it in unexpected ways. Their focus turned them into a specialized fighter, but specialized didn't mean weak. She would have to take her opponents here seriously if she found herself in a struggle for life and death.

As Tenten came out of her thoughts, she noticed a hum of conversation all around her that hadn't been present during the fight. Apparently those invisible walls had been keeping sound out as well as keeping her in. Tenten looked around. The crowd has grown quite a bit while they were fighting. Judging from the general tone of what she was hearing and the looks she was getting it seemed she had made a positive impression. Perhaps they would be seeing a few visitors at their training hall after all.

Tenten was feeling pretty good about how her day had gone until she remembered what she had originally been doing. She froze in horror for a moment before spinning around and staring at a forlorn stain marking the street.

"My groceries!"

ooOoo

 _AN2: Could have been worse. She could have decided to try to make ends meet by selling cabbages off a street cart. Serious note regarding language: it's as annoying for me to write as it is for you to read extended conversations where you have to keep track of who is talking in what language at any given time. My executive decision is that Tenten is smart, she's fully immersed in an English-speaking culture, and she's getting private lessons from a premier Thinker, so she's picking up the language pretty quickly. I will still write her as not fully fluent, but she is generally able to get the gist of what somebody is saying and communicate the gist of what she wants to say._


	7. Chapter 7

ooOoo

A cup of coffee. A comfortable chair. A computer with an internet connection. Life was good.

Lisa squinted as a reflected ray of sunlight pierced her haze of contentment. She turned to examine her window and found that she had left a small gap in the curtains. It would be easy enough to fix, if she were willing to stand up and walk a few steps. Lisa hummed under her breath and reached out to rotate her computer screen, then rolled her chair a few inches to the side.

Perfect.

As if to reward her ingenuity, the notification she had been waiting for chose that moment to pop up on her desktop. Lisa smiled and navigated over to Uber and Leet's web site.

From what Tenten had told her the fight had gone well. Still, Lisa felt some trepidation as she pulled up the video. If anybody could screw up a sure thing, it was Uber and Leet.

The video opened on a close up of Uber and Leet in a studio. The two of them were wearing their Street Fighter costumes and grinning ear to ear. Uber lead off the narration, no doubt channeling a voice over skill of some sort.

"What's up Trüberlievers-"

Lisa paused the video. She needed a moment to process the fact that he had pronounced the umlaut. Taking a deep breath, she took a sip of coffee and clicked the play button.

"-we've got a spicy one for you this week," Uber said. "When the new PRT rogue database dropped last week it had our curiosity, and this photo definitely got our attention."

A snapshot of Lisa in her Tattletale outfit standing with her arm around Tenten floated into view. Tenten had her free hand up in a 'v' while Lisa was wearing her usual grin. Their home and place of business could be seen in the background.

"And before you guys sperg out on us in the comments," Leet interjected, "this is from their official web site."

"Dude," Uber began.

"What? I'm tired of people talking shit like they know what we go through," Leet said. "Can you guys even guess how long we had to wait until we caught our girl wearing a dress?"

"Now you just sound creepy," Uber said.

"Whatever, nobody tunes in to watch you white knighting," Leet said. "Let's roll the tape."

Lisa snickered as she took a sip from her coffee. Leet scuzzing Uber was usually the highlight of the show for her. Today, of course, she had a personal interest in the rest of the program.

The fight itself was more or less how Tenten had described it, although her rather clinical retelling had glossed over just how hard she was hitting by the end there. Lisa winced at the sight of concrete fragments flying into the air after Tenten's foot hit the ground. Well, trying to downplay Tenten's brute abilities after this was always going to be difficult.

The presentation was top notch. The camera was nicely placed to depict the two of them as though they were in a two dimensional fighting game, and the overlaid life bars were nicely done. The slightly cartoony style of the added graphics helped to soften the visceral impact of the fight.

 _Not going to fool anybody serious. Should help with public acceptance._

Once the video was over, Lisa refreshed the page and smiled. It was still early, but the metrics were looking good so far. She casually logged herself in with her special guest password to take a look at the files that weren't available to the public yet.

The behind the scenes video looked good. The addition of a tutorial mode where Uber stood in a vacant lot and performed moves in sync with the overlaid controller inputs was a nice touch. There was also a package of alternate video angles that would appeal to the completists out there. And, finally, a data package that would not be released to the public that included the results from the force measurement tools built into Leet's defensive technology.

Per their agreement, Lisa had the right to do a pass over the data and scrub anything troublesome before they sold it to the PRT. She'd had to give up some of their share of the proceeds for the privilege, but she thought it was worth it.

Her final internet pit stop was on PHO, where a thread discussing Uber and Leet's latest video was already seeing a lot of activity. Several helpful nerds had already tracked down their largely inactive web site and helpfully announced to the thread that they would be open for business soon. It saved Lisa a little bit of trouble and she hadn't even had to pay anybody to shill for her. She mentally added a few usernames to he list of nerds not to bully off the site for the next week or so.

A few of the die hard posters smelled a set up, but not as many as Lisa had expected. She logged in with Tenten's verified account-the one concrete benefit they'd received from their visit to the Rig-and used it to write a brief apology for the property damage done during the fight and promise to pay for the street repair. That done, she resolutely ignored the opportunity to flame idiots off of the thread and logged off from the site.

Prep work complete, she pulled out one of her burner phones and dialed the number for her temporary partners. Leet answered halfway through the second ring.

"Hey Tats, you're on speaker with me and Uber."

Lisa paused for a moment to consider that it really was annoying when somebody pulled this kind of thing on her. She reminded herself that this call had a larger purpose that required her to suppress the urge to reduce Leet into a crying wreck. She also counted to three, slowly, in her head before she responded.

"You sound chipper."

"Why shouldn't I? Our numbers are through the roof," Leet replied. "We've already seen more premium subscriptions than we got all last month."

Excellent news, but in line with her expectations. After all, they were giving the world an exclusive look at a new cape in action.

"I'm glad," Uber said, the hitch in his breath suggesting he hadn't escaped the fight completely unscathed, "it was worth it."

"You should be glad I talked you guys out of your total surprise ambush plan," Lisa said.

"Yeah, yeah, listen to the thinker, I've heard it before," Leet said. "Everything else, you know, check out?"

"Most of it looked good," Lisa said, "but at the end there with those kicks coming so close together I think you got some garbage data."

"Well, shit, I better take that out then," Leet said. "Wouldn't want to mislead our city's protectors."

Lisa could practically hear the finger guns and exaggerated wink he was aiming at the phone. She managed not to use her power to confirm her suspicions.

"Why are you guys trying to keep a low profile, anyways?" Uber asked, taking Lisa's silence as an invitation to talk. "It made sense to me before your girl, you know, kicked through a damn force field."

Lisa grimaced, but smoothed out her expression before it could come out in her voice. The nice thing about working with other people was that they could think for themselves. That was also the problem with working with other people. Lisa got along all right with Uber and Leet, but at the end of the day they were villains. She didn't want them knowing any more of her business than they needed to.

She took a sip of coffee and smiled. "A cup of coffee. A comfortable chair. An internet connection. I don't need much in life to be happy as long as I'm left in peace."

"Very zen," Uber said.

"Yeah," Leet said, "I've never met a thinker who doesn't have something going on the side, but whatever."

It looked like Lisa was going to have to give up one of her secrets.

"Is it so hard to believe? No matter how hard Tenten can kick, I'm just a normal person at the end of the day," Lisa said. "It's much safer for me to stay far away from any super-powered punch outs. You don't need a thinker rating to figure that out."

There was a pause. Lisa could practically feel the skepticism radiating from the other end of the line. It looked like she was going to have to give up some of her secrets if she didn't want her temporary partners to walk away from their team-up spreading wild conspiracy theories.

"If you're wondering why I don't want the PRT digging into my life... I'll admit, I do have some hobbies I don't want to see the light of day," Lisa said, pausing to take another sip of coffee. "To tell the truth, the top two Armsmaster slash writers on PHO, they're both my alt accounts."

"You wrote _Blades of Yesterday_?" Uber blurted out.

Lisa bit her lip and desperately held in her laughter. She never expected to be on the phone with a fan.

After a long moment Leet cleared his throat. "Why?"

Armsmaster was the most detail-oriented member of the local Protectorate. If anybody was going to pick apart their cover story and pry into the secrets of Tenten's past, it was him. Lisa was happy to throw as many marginal irritations or distractions as she could at him to pull his time away from low priority projects like investigating rogues.

"I don't like his beard," she said, her tone light. She paused, wrestling with herself before she spoke again.

The Number Man never said she had to run villains out of town with violence. Talking them around also ought to fulfill the terms of his challenge. Even if she ultimately didn't follow through, there was no real harm in opening her mouth. Lisa firmly told herself she wasn't making any kind of commitment before she spoke.

"You know, as long as we're asking personal questions," Lisa said, "where do you see yourselves in five years?"

"Same shit different day," Leet replied immediately. "In five years my lab is going to be so sweet, though."

"Where are you going with this?" Uber asked, answering her question with a question.

"I'm not sure if you guys noticed, but you didn't break any laws today. People like watching crazy stunt videos even if they're nice and legal," Lisa said. "Hell, if you two made half an effort you could have corporate sponsorship in a year."

"Yeah, if we wanted to abandon our vision," Leet said.

"Why do you even care?" Uber asked.

Lisa shrugged. "Well, you'd need an agent to earn ten percent for sitting around doing nothing while you're out busting your asses."

Leet laughed. "If we ever decide to sell out we'll give you a call."

"Make sure the PRT gets the right set of data and get me my share of the money," Lisa said, "and I'll answer the phone."

She felt good as she hung up. She hadn't expected Uber and Leet to give up villainy after a single talk, but putting the seed of the thought in their mind couldn't hurt. The main thing, though, was that she and Tenten had their names out there as interesting but largely harmless capes that would be open for business soon. There might not be any feeling quite like a job well done, but Lisa definitely loved the feeling of somebody else doing her job for her.

ooOoo

Tenten rose with the sun, as usual, on the day of their grand opening. She dressed herself, as usual, and headed downstairs on her way to the back yard, as usual. Glancing out the front windows on her way by she saw a small crowd gathered around the front gate. That wasn't usual at all.

She frowned. They hadn't expected the ABB to make their move so early. She looked out the window again. Nobody seemed to be wearing the ABB's red and green. It seemed like this was something completely unexpected. Tenten decided to at least take a first crack at dealing with it herself. Trying to get Lisa functional this early in the morning would take rather extreme measures.

Tenten took in more details as she approached the gate. The training hall was surrounded by a wooden fence with a gate made out of wrought iron. The bars of the grate were spaced far enough apart that she could get a pretty good look at the people outside. One boy around her age was standing by the gate, while another three were pulling themselves out of sleeping bags. Had they been there all night? She really had to have a word with Lisa about keeping a better watch up after Tenten went to sleep.

She stopped a few feet from the gate and waited for the boy to explain himself. He just stared at her, even as his friends finished assembling behind him. Finally, when it became clear that he wasn't going to talk, Tenten sighed.

"Why you here?"

"Um," he said, startled, "you're taking students today?"

"Yes. Later," Tenten said, glancing at the horizon to confirm that the sun was just peeking into view. "Much later."

"We'll just wait here then?"

She looked the group over again. They continued to underwhelm. She should have guessed that Lisa's plan to put the word out via the internet would turn up a bunch of oddballs. Well, it would have been nice to have some choice in her students, but as long as they signed up their quota it didn't really matter.

Tenten just shrugged before turning to walk into the backyard. Whatever else was going on, she wouldn't neglect her own training.

By the time her training and Lisa's morning workout were over the crowd outside the gate had only grown. Tenten was starting to feel a little alarmed.

"Who are these people?" she asked. She and Lisa were standing side by side looking out a second story window. There had to be over thirty people gathered out there. More people were trickling into the group as she watched.

"Potential students," Lisa said, grinning, before she cocked her head and stared more intently at the crowd below. "And tourists, too. I told you we were internet-famous."

"Yes, but... so many people."

Lisa just chuckled. "Have you decided how you're going to weed them out yet?"

"I... hmm," Tenten thought out loud. First things first. "Can they all pay?"

Lisa held up a finger to indicate for Tenten to wait a minute, then walked into her room. When she came back she was brandishing a sheaf of paper in her hand.

"We could, say, make them sign a waiver and put down a deposit before we allow them to participate in the selection process," Lisa said, a smirk on her lips.

Having a friend with superhuman intuition could be more annoying than Tenten had expected. She gave Lisa a flat look. "You can do everything if you want."

"No, no," Lisa said, "I'm just here to make sure we get paid."

Tenten rubbed her chin as she thought. It wasn't like she could just go pick out the clan kids and let them in. Finding any kind of genius was unlikely, for that matter. This whole world had only received chakra based abilities within living memory. Even if somebody had set up a breeding program to develop strong talents it wouldn't have had time to bear fruit.

Not that her students needed to be geniuses. The whole point of this was to keep their cushy treatment coming from the government, after all. It would just be more enjoyable for her to teach people with potential. But where Konoha had a battery of tests and a fully trained staff at the Academy to identify latent abilities, she just had herself.

In the end, her chosen method was rather straightforward. Once Lisa had made sure everybody had turned in a completed form and deposit, Tenten took the first group of ten into the back yard. Then, with a quick smile and a "remember, do your best!" she led them on a run across the yard.

Wind sprints. Pushups. Repeat.

Tenten kept her pace down to just a shade faster than the fastest applicant, and kept a sharp eye on everybody running with her. This wasn't a test of fitness. Not really. She didn't expect any of the applicants to be in particularly good shape, and for most of them she could peg more or less when they would be unable to continue. What she was really looking to test was their heart.

She could whip anybody into physical shape given time. But somebody who gave half-hearted effort was just tying a millstone around their own progress that would never go away. The simple but brutal physical exercise was a filter. The applicants who kept going until they were more or less physically unable to continue were material she could work with. The applicants who loafed or who tapped out while they still had more to give were no good, even if they ran faster or longer than the others.

When the last applicant finally collapsed, Tenten gave them a minute to cool off before lining them up and bestowing upon each of them either a "no" or a "maybe." She led the maybes inside of the training hall, gave them each a spot to sit, and told them to wait. The nos she escorted off the property before grabbing the next batch and starting all over again.

ooOoo

Lisa stood by the window in her room and watched the show taking place in their backyard with a smile. She raised her mug in salute towards the poor bastards racing back and forth under Tenten's merciless gaze, then took a sip of coffee before twitching her curtains shut and returning to her computer.

Her role in the day's activities was over for now. The consent forms and payment information were safely collected and stored in her filing cabinet, and Tenten had actually asked her not to hover over the applicants in the front yard or the prospective students downstairs. Leaving them apparently unsupervised was all part of the test. Lisa was naturally all in favor of any plan that didn't require her to do anything.

She did glance at the feed from the security cameras from time to time just to make sure they weren't being robbed. So far everybody was surprisingly well behaved. Or perhaps it wasn't that surprising: the prospects inside didn't have any energy left for mischief, while everybody outside had seen the kind of damage Tenten could do if they managed to piss her off.

That video had helped them draw quite the crowd. Parents who wanted their high school aged kids to learn to defend themselves, all manner of ordinary citizens with an interest in martial arts, and of course the cape groupies. One of the reasons their video had become so popular was that clearly videotaped cape fights were fairly rare. It was also rare to have the opportunity to interact closely with a friendly cape at a cost a normal person could afford. Lisa hadn't been very aggressive with the pricing for their classes, since the main point was to hit their required customer numbers rather than to try and make serious profit off of teaching.

At the price she was asking, even somebody uninterested in martial arts might consider signing up just to be close to a known parahuman. That kind of person would obviously be less enthusiastic if they knew they were in for the gym class from hell Tenten was running in the backyard. Indeed, Lisa had seen part of the crowd melt away as word of what was going on came in from the early rejects. Even so, there were more than enough people outside that they could afford to be picky in choosing the thirty or so students they'd ultimately sign up.

Lisa tore her eyes away from the video feeds and did a quick spin through PHO and her throwaway email accounts. No time was the wrong time for shitposting. Her predatory grin fell from her face, though, as she looked over the image attached to a recently received email.

 _Cell phone camera-_

Lisa closed off her power as it fed her obvious information, a little irritated with herself that her reaction to danger was a reflexive reach for her power. There was no doubt that this email was a danger.

A candid snapshot from the side. Tenten, casually walking down the Boardwalk, carrying Coil's unconscious hireling over her shoulder. Just ahead and clearly visible in frame, an unmasked Lisa. It wasn't exactly proof of a life of villainy or even that they had committed any particular crime. Even so, this was exactly the kind of information that Lisa did not want getting out there.

The email itself didn't give her much to work off of. The sender information was gibberish, and the body of the email contained nothing but a phone number.

It seemed she didn't have much choice. Gritting her teeth, Lisa selected a fresh burner phone, let down the walls restraining her power, and dialed. The phone was picked up halfway through the first ring.

"Hello Lisa," Coil said. His voice had been etched into her memory and she recognized it immediately without needing the aid of her power. "Or do you prefer Sarah?"

Yes, Lisa decided, the whole game of playing amateur psychic over the telephone truly was quite annoying. She took a moment to compose herself before she replied.

"Tattletale's fine. After all, this is a business call."

"Good, good," Coil said, a cheerful tone entering his voice that Lisa figured he usually only used when he successfully lured a small child into a van. "Let's talk business, then."

 _Wants me to start the conversation. Prefers to respond to others from a position of power. Prefers to be in a position of power of others. Wants to own-_

"I thought," Lisa said, as much to head off her own speculation as anything else, "we had an understanding."

"Oh?"

Wants-

"I thought," Lisa said, a touch of heat entering her tone, "we were not going to fuck with each other."

"There's no need to be vulgar," Coil said. The chiding did little to settle Lisa's hackles.

"Attempted blackmail calls for some vulgarity, in my opinion," Lisa replied.

"Blackmail? Is that what you think this is?" Coil said, chuckling. "Sometimes I forget how new you are to this game."

 _Establishing self in position of authority. Wants authority, power-_

Lisa gritted her teeth and reminded herself that if Coil had really wanted to attack her he could have sent the picture straight to the PRT or PHO. He had some longer game in mind. If she wanted to find out his angle she would need to play along. For now. "Please enlighten me, then."

"While the heroes of the Protectorate make the headlines, it's the people at the PRT you really need to watch out for," Coil said. "Ordinary men and women, toiling away at their ordinary jobs, have tripped up more parahuman villains-and 'rogues'-than I can count. Truly the unsung heroes of our great nation."

"Yeah, they told us about the TPS reports," Lisa said, rolling her eyes.

"Of course, of course," Coil said, warming up to his subject. "What they didn't tell you about is that while popular entertainment would have you believe that Thinkers are caught when they are outwitted by a better Thinker, the far more common scenario is that the unfortunate Thinker is arrested because they lost track of some mundane detail."

"Such as an inconvenient cell phone photo?" Lisa asked.

"Precisely," Coil replied. "In many ways you might think of the investigative arm of the PRT as a great machine that grinds away at a massive swath of raw data to produce that kind of telling detail."

Lisa felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead as the penny dropped. He wasn't threatening to give this photo to the PRT. He was saying-

"The PRT has this photo?"

"In a sense," Coil said. A pompous tone was beginning to creep into his voice. "I have many friends, you see. Some of them happen to work at the lower levels of the PRT. While their work is so very important, their salaries are rather inadequate."

Lisa had always considered herself fairly cynical. She'd told her fair share of jokes about how the "PR" was the most important part of the PRT. She'd seen the costumed heroes as a distraction meant to placate the masses rather than any kind of elite crime fighting force. She'd somehow never imagined, though, that large swathes of the organization would be on the take.

Was the local branch of the PRT just like any other corrupt police force? Or was it Coil's reach that was so remarkable? What could she do, if somebody whose reach stretched so far was hell bent on _owning_ her?

"What do you want?" Lisa asked, trying to keep her fear out of her voice.

"A simple friendly relationship," Coil said. "You fancy yourself an information gatherer. If you gather information that concerns me, I'd like to know about it."

 _First step of many. First tie to bind. Wants to layer relationship with obligations until freedom is a formality._

Lisa pushed aside her misgivings. Any deal with Coil would have long term ramifications. On the other hand, refusing to deal would have immediate short term consequences. He had chosen this photo as his shot across the bow. Even if they could weather the consequences from this particular tidbit becoming public, there was no telling what else Coil had in reserve.

She had negotiated their cease fire while Coil was off balance and reeling from Tenten's intervention. He had had five weeks to prepare this counterattack. Giving a thinker that much time to prepare was a recipe for disaster. That was why she needed to play for time now.

"If I do, you'll make things like this photo disappear?"

"I'm afraid you overestimate me. The PRT takes their information security quite seriously," Coil replied. "What I can do is ensure that things like this don't receive the timely attention that they deserve. Reports misfiled, metadata misapplied, interoffice mail sent to the wrong person. That sort of thing."

Her blood boiled at that. Not just the patronizing tone, though that was annoying, but the fact that he would bully her into a deal and then still hold this over her head was infuriating. Unfortunately, she didn't have much room to maneuver.

"So no guarantees? Fine," Lisa said, unable to keep all of the heat out of her voice. "Here's my offer: I run across something that endangers you and yours, I'll give you a heads up. You want me to investigate something actively for you, you want me to spot opportunities, you pay market rate."

"Eminently reasonable. A pleasure doing business with you, Tattletale."

With that, the line went dead. Lisa spent a moment staring at the phone in her hand before she spun around and threw it against the wall. The case smashed open and electronic parts went flying everywhere. Apparently build quality wasn't a high priority in prepaid cell phone construction. Lisa sighed. She was going to have to clean this up.

All she wanted was a quiet, comfortable life. The Number Man's offer was an interesting intellectual challenge, but not something she really considered pursuing. She was confident that in time they would figure out a safer way to get Tenten home. In the meantime, Lisa wanted to avoid homicidal attention from the city's supervillains and enjoy life's simple pleasures.

A cup of coffee. A comfortable chair. A computer with an internet connection.

Coil was not going to let her be. Today's bargain wasn't particularly onerous, but it was only a matter of time before he came to her with another offer. Another string of obligation, tying her a little tighter to his interests. Then another, and another, until she was taking his orders directly. And if she ever said no, well, Coil still had that team of professionals ready to work her over until what was left of her was ready to obey Coil's every whim.

Did she dare to enlist Tenten's help in an outright war on Coil? Lisa knew she would be up for it, but could they win? It was possible. Lisa knew she hadn't seen the full extent of Tenten's abilities. On the other hand, Coil could see the future. Heading into a fight at a time of his choosing seemed unwise, to say the least.

Of course, his vision of the future wasn't perfect. He had limits. Otherwise Lisa could never have escaped. She just didn't have a good idea of what those limits were. She was fairly sure that he couldn't see into the future very far. It was a common restriction, and it made sense with her escape. She thought he had other restrictions, other flaws in his power, but as to what they were she only had guesses.

Until she had a chance to discover those flaws and figure out how to take advantage of them, the only thing she could do was make a plan for the long term. Weave such a tangled web that by the time Coil could foresee the denouement he would already be trapped.

And, honestly, if she was going to put in that much effort, why should she leave the rest of Brockton Bay's villains out of the fun?

ooOoo


	8. Chapter 8

ooOoo

Lisa felt vaguely disappointed as no fully formed plan to rid the city of Coil sprang immediately to mind. As handy as it was to have a thinker power, all parahuman abilities had their limits. It was funny how normies looked at thinker powers as being so very all or nothing, at least on forums like PHO. Either thinkers were masterminds pulling the strings behind the PRT, the Illuminati and the Freemasons, or thinkers were just idiot savants who were helpless when they couldn't push a button and get an answer with their power.

She'd never talked shop with another thinker, of course, but Lisa didn't see much truth in either view. Sure, her power could solve puzzles and gather information like a champ, but when it came time to use that information she was largely on her own. She could use her power to refine her plans by pointing out faulty assumptions and running through what-if scenarios, but coming up with the original plan was up to her.

Fortunately, she hadn't been an idiot before acquiring her power.

Even now she could feel the beginnings of a notion of a plan coming together in the back of her mind. She'd need to give it time to percolate in her subconscious before she started trying to refine it into a final product. Ordinarily she'd distract her conscious mind by working on her latest bit of Armsmaster-related homoerotica, but as it happened today she had other busywork available.

Tenten had finalized her selection, which meant that they had thirty new students in need of paperwork. They also needed to be sorted out into three separate classes of ten and put on a regular schedule. Lisa waded into the paperwork with her costume and friendly smile both firmly fixed in place. It wasn't brain surgery but it was enough to keep her mind occupied. By the third student she was starting to hit her stride and she eventually sank into such a zen-like state that she was surprised when there was no one waiting in front of her after she finished the last one.

The mindless paperwork had done its job. At least, it had given her time to think of at least one new angle of attack. Lisa interlaced her fingers together and stretched her arms in front of her until she felt the satisfying pop of her knuckles cracking, then settled into a relaxed slouch to think things over.

It had occurred to her that rather than trying to come up with an all purpose master plan, she could instead try to discover more about Coil's power and then tailor a plan to target his weaknesses directly. Coil certainly seemed interested in drawing her closer to him. She could use that closeness to try to decipher the details of his ability.

The idea appealed to the part of her that hated acting under uncertainty. She wasn't above using her power to win at a game of rock-paper-scissors so that she would have first pick of the bedrooms. If she could gather enough information so that her plan was guaranteed to work before she even put it into place, she'd naturally do so.

The first problem with the plan was that it involved getting close to Coil. He had introduced himself by trying to abduct her so he could brainwash her into his service. He had followed that up with a spot of blackmail, during which he had shown a blithe acceptance of the disappearance of his employees. Come to think of it, why hadn't he pressed her about that? Perhaps he was uncertain of exactly what had happened, and didn't want to show weakness. Perhaps he was just a sociopath. Either way, he wasn't somebody that she wanted to have involved in her life any more than absolutely necessary.

The other problem with that plan was that Coil was actively trying to draw her closer. She had to assume that he had a decent grasp of the limits of his own power. If he thought that pulling her close would work out well for him, then that was reason enough for her to avoid it. She didn't want to fall into the trap of just mindlessly opposing everything Coil wanted, but she thought the logic went at least this far: Coil was going out of his way to reel her in, and everything she knew about him suggested that he was a very cautious man. If her power were good enough to let her improvise a way around his power just from a close working relationship, he'd be acting differently.

If gathering information was out then she was back to needing a plan that could defeat a precog power in general. Of course, while she didn't know much about Coil's power she did know a little bit about Coil the man. Besides the phone calls, she had also done a little bit of digging into his background.

Coil was cold and calculating. It could be an artifact of his power, or it could just be the nature of his personality. He liked to keep a low profile. When he acted, he acted decisively and almost always successfully. The only blemish on his record that Lisa was aware of was his failure to bring her in. That, she believed, was due to the fact that countering her own thinker ability had stretched Coil to his limits, such that the surprise appearance of Tenten was enough to completely derail his plans.

Gradually mounting pressure plus a surprise. She could work with that.

Thump. Thump. Thwack.

Lisa was pulled from her thoughts by a sharp impact to the back of her head. She looked down to see a pebble resting on the floor. Pulling her eyes up, she glanced around the room.

 _Ricochet off the side of the doorway and the edge of the bookshelf before hitting you._

Only one person she knew was capable of that kind of throw. Lisa was already grumbling to herself by the time a voice came drifting in from the next room to confirm her deduction.

"Nap later. Finish work now!"

Lisa shook her head. She'd almost forgotten the last task she'd agreed to perform today: signing up the teaching assistants. One last bit of busywork before she could get some proper scheming in.

Lisa had her game face back on as she walked into the next room.

"I wasn't napping, I was thinking. It's what I do," Lisa said, rubbing at the back of her head before turning to face the three students who had been held back. "Hi there, I'm Tattletale."

The first member of the group that caught her eye was a tall black teenager, perhaps a year older than her. He had the body of somebody who was no stranger to the inside of a gym, and Lisa's power whispered in her ear that he was no stranger to martial arts, either. His gaze on her was focused but not nervous. He didn't look like a tourist encountering a cape so much as a _cape sizing up the competition_.

Lisa forcibly pulled back on her power and did her best to give him a casual nod of acknowledgement before turning her attention to the next student in line. Also black, a girl this time who was a little bit younger than Lisa and _was also sizing up a fellow cape_ and goddamnit, Lisa kept her grin plastered to her face as she checked out the last of the three.

Well. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is _what the hell is Tenten playing at_.

Later. She'd chew her partner out later. First she had to get through this conversation without unmasking anybody.

"Brian," the first boy volunteered, "and I'm not sure I understand what this is all about."

Lisa had had a whole joke about joining the cult being optional, but decided that this wasn't the best time for humor.

"It's simple enough, really. Tenten knows her stuff, but she's still working on mastering the language," Lisa said. "Having an assistant on hand who knows the material will help things go more smoothly. You help out during classes and chip in during set up before hand and cleanup afterwards."

"And what's in it for us?" the girl asked. She didn't volunteer her name. _Ethnicity rules out Empire 88 and ABB. Possibly a Ward or low profile independent. Matches based on body type-_

Lisa kept the grin on her face as she tamped down on her power once more. She liked knowing people's secrets, but she tried not to gather bits of information that they'd be willing to kill over.

"You get extra instruction to help you carry out your duties," Lisa said, "and your lessons are free."

"Free is good," Brian said.

He seemed to speak for all three of them. A moment later, Tenten had three young parahumans signed up as her teaching assistants.

Lisa waited until the three of them had left and she and Tenten were alone in the building before she whirled around and fixed the other girl with a glare. "Three teacher's assistants, three capes? Really?"

"Yes," Tenten said, a smug grin on her face.

Lisa had many questions. The first was just how Tenten had managed to pick the capes out of a crowd. She knew what the answer would be, though. Some kind of nonsense about chakra. Lisa didn't judge others by how they chose to present their powers. If Tenten's grab bag effects worked off of what she perceived as a magic pool of energy, that was fine. Lisa drew the line, though, at sitting through a technical lecture on the internal mechanics of somebody else's power. She also didn't want to get drawn into another argument over Tenten's insistence that all powers ran on chakra even when nobody else perceived it the way she did.

Even if asking how she had known was out, that left plenty of important questions. One was clearly the most pressing.

"Why?"

It was possible Tenten was just messing with her, although to be fair that was more something that Lisa would do. More alarming was the chance that Tenten was planning to recruit some kind of cape army. While that might work, it could also easily blow up in their faces if it wasn't handled appropriately.

"I think they might learn as fast as you," Tenten replied, her grin becoming somehow even more smug.

"What do you-"

Lisa was cut off by Tenten flicking a pebble at her. Lisa's arm moved almost before conscious thought, intercepting the throw and catching the pebble with a loud smack. She felt the sting on her palm but the sensation was muted by the shock she felt as she stared at the pebble with the walls down on her power.

 _Casual flick accelerated pebble to speed of a major league fastball. Impossible for baseline human to catch when surprised from so close by._

And yet she'd caught it. How was that possible?

 _Not baseline human. Power unknown. Power unknown. Power-_

She shut down the useless loop. Whatever else had changed, the poor results she got from using her power on herself stayed constant. With some effort she shifted her focus from herself to Tenten, who was still grinning like a cat that just caught the canary. While Lisa had immediately thought of Teacher and his Birdcage-worthy exploits when she thought of a power granting cape, Tenten wasn't wearing the expression of a supervillain about to reveal her master plan. Rather, she looked like somebody who had just scored a point in a long running argument who wouldn't let Lisa hear the end of it for weeks.

"You listen about _chakra_ now?"

Weeks, if Lisa was lucky. She'd known their abortive discussion of _chakra_ had frustrated Tenten as well. She hadn't realized that Tenten had not given up on persuading Lisa to her point of view but had merely been biding her time for weeks.

Lisa sighed, tossing the pebble off to the side before folding her arms over her chest. Something felt fundamentally wrong about letting somebody else explain to her how the world worked when she was the one with the thinker power, but she could admit it when she was missing important information.

"Tell me, then."

Tenten's face lit up for a moment before she smoothed her features into a neutral expression and assumed a lecturing pose. It looked natural despite her young age.

" _Chakra_ is how parahumans do what they do. I spend years learning how to use it. Each step difficult. Each step a small improvement. No big leaps. Many like me in _Konohagakure_."

Tenten had made such claims before. Having some evidence that she had trained Lisa up into having superpowers added more than a little weight to what she was saying, though.

"You're saying that anybody can train themselves into being a cape?"

Tenten frowned. "Not just anybody."

Tenten produced a large sheet of paper from somewhere and turned to pin it up on the wall of the training room. A felt tipped pen appeared in her hand and she occupied herself drawing a crude outline of the human body. She finished the drawing with a spiral in the head and another spiral near the navel.

"Connection to... higher world, draws _spirit energy_ ," she said, indicating the spiral in the head. "Connection to lower world, draws _physical energy_. Energies combine to make _chakra_ that can affect this world. Person with bad connection has limited potential."

Tenten had pointed to the spiral in the navel when she spoke of the lower world. Lisa had a feeling she wasn't talking about different worlds in the sense of Earth Aleph or Earth Bet. Even an abstract idea like heaven or hell didn't feel quite right. Instead it was more like _different planes of existence. Higher, ethereal, connected to the mind. Lower, fundamental, connected to the body._

Lisa shook her head, not letting her power run off on wild tangents.

"Even so, you're talking about learning superpowers like it's playing the piano," Lisa said. "Some people are talented, some people are tone deaf, but everybody can do it at least a little bit. How can nobody here have ever figured it out? For that matter, how did people in _Konohagakure_ figure it out?"

"The Sage of Six Paths," Tenten replied. She said the name with a sort of religious reverence that Lisa had never heard her use before. "The first _shinobi_. The strongest. He brought _chakra_ to the world and taught how to use it."

From the way Tenten spoke of the man Lisa couldn't help but make the obvious comparison to Scion. The first cape. The most powerful cape. And, many thought, the man responsible for bringing capes to Earth Bet in the first place. Of course, Scion had never taught anybody anything. He'd never even spoken a word other than his name.

"The Sage of Six Paths," Lisa said. "He taught people? Spoke to them? Have you met him?"

Tenten laughed at the last question, shaking her head. "The Sage lived long long ago. I only know the stories."

Suddenly a lot of the small oddities surrounding Tenten were starting to make sense.

"How long ago?"

"Villages like _Konohagakure_ exist for fifty, sixty years," Tenten said, tapping her chin as she thought out loud. "Before that, warring clans for hundreds and hundreds of years. Before that, myths and legends. Before that, Sage of Six Paths."

Tenten's casual willingness to display her powers. Her befuddlement at the idea of keeping a secret cape identity. It had all struck Lisa as strange, but now it made perfect sense. Tenten didn't come from a society where capes were strange outliers that lived on the fringes of society. She came from a society shaped by capes, molded by their existence. A world where capes were front and center.

It was sheer hubris to think that Earth Bet was the first place parahumans appeared just because they beat out Earth Aleph. If Scion randomly showed up on Earth Bet one day, why shouldn't some Scion equivalent have shown up on a different earth a thousand years ago? Tenten's world had really hit the jackpot with a Scion who actually spoke to people and explained what was going on.

Although it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Lisa had talked enough to Tenten to get an idea of what her world was like. Her village of _Konohagakure_ was either a feudal kingdom or a military dictatorship, depending on how you looked at it, with political power accruing to the strongest capes around. Lisa could easily imagine Earth Bet going the same way if parahumans had showed up during the Middle Ages. When people believed in rule by divine right, what better proof of divine will existed than powers beyond the understanding of mortal man? In a way, Earth Bet was lucky to have a modern industrial society in place before people with superpowers started running around.

Also, as she thought about it, there were a few things that didn't quite line up.

"How can people here have powers without knowing a thing about _chakra_ , then?"

"In _Konohagakure_ , many learn like me. Others have _kekkei genkai_ ," Tenten said. "Can learn to use _chakra_ like everybody. Can also use family techniques that are born to them."

Lisa had originally translated the phrase _kekkei genkai_ to mean "parahuman ability." Parsing out the individual meaning of the words, though, together with what Tenten was saying, it seemed to mean something like a parahuman ability inherent to a bloodline. It seemed that Tenten was suggesting that capes in Earth Bet all had these bloodline talents that they stumbled into and were able to use without truly understanding the underlying mechanism.

"Parahuman abilities don't breed true, though," Lisa said.

Tenten shrugged. "Some _kekkei genkai_ appear at birth, some do not. Some only appear in stress of battle. Some do not always appear. Clans work carefully for long time to make strong, reliable bloodlines."

That was a fair point. Parahumans had only been around for thirty-odd years. It was hard to draw any firm conclusions about how powers were inherited in that short of a time. Especially given Earth Bet's more modern attitude towards marriage that encouraged marrying for love instead of marrying in pursuit of a family-directed breeding experiment.

"I guess," Lisa said, conceding the point. "So what does all this have to do with me and your teaching assistants?"

"You took first few lessons on _chakra_ and jumped three years ahead in training," Tenten said.

"But I didn't even know I was learning how to use _chakra_ ," Lisa said.

Tenten turned back to the diagram on the wall and started making additions. First, she drew some crosshatching to shade in one of the figure's legs. Next, she drew a thick line from the head down through the body out to the right hand, drawing an arrow on the end. She then drew a small flame symbol over the other hand, before finally drawing a few circles around the head of the figure.

"Working with _chakra_ , four paths. First, change self by instinct. Next, change self on purpose," Tenten said, pointing to the first two additions she'd made to the diagram. "You have decent grasp on instinct use. React faster, move faster, hit harder. Almost ready to learn to use on purpose. As if you spent years at Academy already."

Tenten's latest revelations put a new spin on the cool down exercises she'd been having Lisa do for the last several weeks. Lisa had thought it was a bunch of mumbo jumbo about energy visualization and the power of mind over matter, but clearly there was much more to it. Even so, it didn't feel like she had learned three years' worth of material in a month.

"Next path is change world within rules," Tenten said, holding up her hand and concentrating. A small ball of fire flickered into existence over her hand for a moment before she closed her hand into a fist and snuffed it out. "Make fire, it burn what fire burns, not burn what fire not burn. Make water and things get wet. And so on. Last path is to change rules of world. Very difficult."

Tenten obviously sensed some of Lisa's skepticism. "You not learn three years of knowledge. You learn like you had three years to practice. I can think of three maybe reasons. First, you are one in a hundred generation genius. Second, unlocking _kekkei genkai_ make using chakra easy. Third..."

Tenten hesitated, looking away for a moment before she steeled her resolve and continued. "I learn to use _chakra_ modern way. Safe but slow. Warring clans would push children until they broke. Mind shatter, spirit shatter, body shatter, then put back together. Cracks remain and open body and spirit to connect with _chakra_ energy."

Lisa shuddered. She knew exactly what Tenten was talking about. Trigger events. What she was suggesting was that either having a power made it easier to learn to use _chakra_ or going through a trigger event was the kind of thing that made it easier to use _chakra_ whether or not it had anything to do with parahuman powers. Lisa couldn't think of a quick way to test which was which offhand. Teaching other capes how to use _chakra_ would only rule out the theory that she was some kind of unique genius.

It was at that moment that Lisa's train of thought came screeching to a halt. Tenten could teach people how to gain superpowers. Not hand them power ups with her own power, but legitimately train them up into capes in their own right. This would change the world. Forget cleaning out Brockton Bay, just revealing this would-

Actually, it would hardly lead anywhere good, Lisa realized as the moment of excitement wore off. The minute the word came out, assuming they weren't just dismissed as crackpots, the PRT would want Tenten locked up somewhere training new government capes. They might try to be polite about it, but they wouldn't let somebody who knew such a valuable secret just wander around Brockton Bay unsupervised. Much less let her put together a journey back to her home dimension.

And capture by the PRT was probably a best case scenario. The things Coil would do if he had an inkling of what Tenten was worth didn't bear thinking about.

"You can't have your teaching assistants learn about _chakra_ ," Lisa said, trying to keep the sudden surge of alarm out of her voice.

"Not until they prove trustworthy," Tenten said. She cocked her head when Lisa didn't relax at her declaration. "Even then?"

"If word got out that you could teach people superpowers, every gang in the world would come running to kidnap you," Lisa said. "Even the PRT."

Tenten looked at her for a long moment before giving a slow nod. "It is a crime to be rich and weak."

"Maybe, someday, if we trust them to keep it absolutely secret... but until then, we need to keep this to ourselves," Lisa said, before a thought suddenly occurred to her. "What have you been teaching those PRT grunts?"

Tenten waved her hand dismissively. "Baby stuff. Quick recovery from exercise. Would take them years to catch up to you."

"Fine, fine," Lisa said. She tapped her fingers against her upper arm as she thought. "We can play that off as some side effect of your combat thinker powers if it ever comes up. You'll have to stop teaching them any more about _chakra_ , though."

"All right," Tenten said, before sighing. "This was supposed to be nice surprise, not so serious."

"Danger of being a small fish in a big pond, I'm afraid," Lisa said. "I have some bad news of my own as well."

"Oh?"

"Coil," Lisa said, putting all of her disgust for the man into a single word. "He's still pushing. He's not going to leave us alone."

Tenten listened patiently as Lisa explained the photo she'd received and relayed the gist of the subsequent phone call. She seemed appropriately subdued at the fact that Coil was holding blackmail material over her head, but smiled with genuine pleasure at Lisa's declaration that Coil's actions had firmed her resolve to take the Number Man's deal and rid the city of its criminal parahuman element.

"Good, good," Tenten said, a small knife suddenly appearing in her hand where she dexterously spun it around and between her fingers in a hypnotic pattern. "Go after Coil first? Make example?"

"We can't," Lisa said. "He can see the future, at least a little bit. He wouldn't have pushed me like he did if we could just charge in and kill him for it."

"He can see the future? How can we ever win?" Tenten said, frowning.

"He doesn't see everything. He has limits. Otherwise you never would have gotten me away from his goons," Lisa replied. "We need a plan. We need to make things worse for him slowly, bit by bit, until every future he sees ends in his death."

A smile slowly spread across Tenten's face. "I like the sound of that."

Now all Lisa had to do was to actually put a plan together. Fortunately, she could feel the first few steps starting to fall into place in her mind.

"First things first. We wait for the ABB to approach us for protection money," Lisa said.

"Take out Lung, make an example?" Tenten asked, before shaking her head. "No, that would not hurt Coil."

"Exactly. What's more, Lung is a stabilizing influence," Lisa said. "He's strong, but doesn't hold as much territory as his strength would allow. That power he keeps in reserve acts as a deterrent against the other gangs. None of them will resort to truly extreme methods for fear of rousing the sleeping dragon. Keeping him in place will help keep the gangs in check as we whittle them away."

Lisa grinned before she continued. "We don't need to fight Lung. Actually, we need to talk to him..."

ooOoo

 _AN: Yer a ninja, Lisa._


	9. Chapter 9

_AN: I'm open to suggestion as to whether this chapter is too chuuni, not chuuni enough, or possesses just the right amount of chuuni._

ooOoo

The ABB, Tenten decided, was a disappointment. Their leader didn't exert himself to the utmost to carve out new territory and that same lax attitude seemed to have trickled own through the ranks. She couldn't think of any other explanation for why it had taken them nine days from the time Tenten and Lisa opened for business before they showed up looking for protection money. Nine days!

And when they showed up, they didn't even try to set the property on fire. They didn't try to kidnap an employee to carve up to try and break Tenten's will. Instead, they sent three nervous looking teenagers who were standing across the street from the training hall. They looked to be rousing each other's spirits in preparation for making a move, unaware that they were currently being watched from Tenten's second story window.

Tenten sighed. Disappointing or not, they had to work with the ABB. Besides the value of keeping Lung present in the city as a deterrent, the simple fact was that she and Lisa did live in his territory. Maintaining cordial relations and a secure home base was just common sense.

"I will go talk to them," Tenten said.

Next to her, Lisa grumbled something inaudible, then cleared her throat. "It still feels wrong leaving the thinker at home during negotiations."

Tenten just smiled and shook her head before she began making her way downstairs. It had been Lisa's idea to have her handle the talks with Lung. They didn't need to be clever in dealing with the gang leader. They needed him to take them seriously.

The ABB contingent didn't look any more impressive from close up. They were visibly startled when Tenten opened the gate and stepped out onto the street to approach them. They grew more agitated as she approached and only relaxed slightly when she stopped close enough to talk comfortably but a bit too far away to attack easily. A few feet of distance was meaningless if Tenten truly had hostile intentions, but they seemed to draw strength from the illusion of safety.

Nobody spoke for a long moment. The silence started to feel a little awkward. Tenten could feel her disappointment grow. The whole point of this trip was for the ABB to present their demands. For them to be too weak to even broach the subject was just too shameful.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, one of the three proved a little braver than his fellows. He took a step forward before speaking. "You're in ABB territory."

"Yes," Tenten said.

He seemed a bit confused by her easy agreement. "If you want to do business in our turf you have to pay a fee."

"Yes," Tenten said again.

He glanced from side to side, clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop. "You'll pay us-"

"I would like to speak to Lung," Tenten said, keeping her voice level even as she interrupted him.

"What? No, no," he replied.

"You know who I am," Tenten said. "I would speak with Lung before I pay him tribute."

"Pay first, and maybe he'll talk to you later," he said. "Lung doesn't have time for small fry like you."

Ordinarily, if a subordinate tried to obstruct a meeting between herself and a gang boss, she would present the boss with the subordinate's head as a gentle reminder not to waste her time. Or at the very least with his tongue, as a fool need not be allowed to continue to speak foolishness. Now, though, Tenten had to adjust. She didn't have Konoha standing behind her and according to Lisa's briefing Lung had a surprisingly sentimental attachment to the lives of his underlings.

The simple, direct approach was out. That was all right. Tenten could be subtle.

"How strange," she said. "You speak for Lung. You decide who he speaks to. You must be very important. But I do not know your name."

Something of Tenten's internal thoughts must have showed up in her tone. Or perhaps she wasn't quite as subtle as she thought. Either way, the man before her paled slightly before he started fumbling with his pockets.

"Fine, fine, I'll make the call. Don't blame me if it doesn't turn out how you wanted," he said. He pulled a phone out of his pocket and started fiddling with it. A moment later he was engaged in a rapid fire conversation in a language Tenten didn't understand.

Tenten eyed the device in his hand while he spoke. Lisa had told her about these "cell phones." As far as she could understand it they operated as handheld radio sets that could connect with each other by entering the proper numerical code. She didn't really understand how so many radios could operate at the same time without creating any crosstalk, but technology had never been her strong suit. The part that really puzzled her was that criminals seemed content to broadcast their conversations into the open air. Radios in Konoha were largely used on official business, and even they were very careful any time they were up against opposition that might try to listen in on what they were saying.

Lisa had claimed there were methods that could be used to prevent the government from overhearing such conversations but it still felt like an unnecessary risk to her. At least the man in front of her seemed to have the sense not to speak her name over the phone. Tenten had been listening carefully and was confident she would have been able to pick it out of the stream of foreign babble. If he had been careless as well as disrespectful she would have been sorely vexed by the need to spare his life.

Of course, she and Lisa knew that they couldn't keep the fact of this meeting completely secret. The contents of it, yes, but the mere fact that they had met with the leader of the ABB would be very difficult to hide. Even so, there was no excuse for being sloppy and Tenten was glad that her first contact within the ABB wasn't just broadcasting her business out over the airwaves.

He finished the conversation and put the phone away, a complicated expression on his face. "Lung will meet you. I will take you there."

Tenten nodded and gestured for him to take the lead, which he did. They proceeded at a fairly leisurely pace. She used the time to review what she knew of the man she was about to meet.

From what Lisa had told her, of the gang bosses in the city Lung was the closest to what Tenten knew as the typical bandit lord. There were differences, of course. Lisa had told her a story from early in Lung's rein as the head of the ABB. A local shop owner had refused to pay protection money. Lung had dragged the man's three teenaged daughters in front of his store and threatened to burn them to death then and there if he refused to pay. After the man capitulated, Lung didn't kill even one of the girls as a warning of the costs of defiance. He even returned them with their virtue intact.

Tenten had never heard of a bandit attempting to win people over by showing mercy before, but it seemed to have worked. Lung was secure in his position in charge of the ABB and the ABB were secure in their position as the second strongest gang in Brockton Bay, enjoying the tacit support of the people who lived in ABB-controlled neighborhoods. Of course, much of Lung's success could be attributed to the power of his bloodline.

Even before the power in his blood was actively invoked Lung was stronger and tougher than an ordinary man. However, it was in a fight that his true power was revealed. He regenerated from any damage taken with remarkable speed, which by itself would allow him to outlast most opponents. Most frightening, though, was that his power increased as a fight dragged on. Bigger, stronger, tougher. Even his regeneration grew faster with time. Nobody knew his upper limit, or if he even had one.

Power without limit. It was enough to make Tenten's palms itch. A bloodline worthy of a Kage. In the end, though, Lung had chosen to cast aside the good of his people and live his life as a bandit. He might show more mercy than the bandits Tenten knew, but at heart he was cut from the same cloth. He had decided to ignore the restraints of morality and law in order to fulfill his own appetites. Great power yoked to a petty cause would come to nothing in time.

Still, his bloodline talent really was something else. Like any shinobi in her position, Tenten ached to discover the answer to the question: _can I defeat him?_ Like any experienced shinobi in her position, she was able to rein in her desire for battle in order to pursue a larger objective. For now, Lung was useful. In the future, well, who could say?

The foot traffic around their little group had continued to grow as they walked. The training hall was located in a residential area on the fringes of ABB territory. Lung's men were leading her into a commercial district nearer to the heart of his power. Small businesses began to pop up on the side of the street and the increase in pedestrians was supplemented by the appearance of the occasional food cart. Tenten spotted one stall selling what certainly looked like takoyaki. She would have stopped for a snack if she didn't have an image to maintain.

Their group finally came to a stop in front of a large but nondescript building where her guide bade her to wait while he spoke to a pair of men in suits standing guard at the entrance. If pressed for a guess Tenten would have said it was a warehouse or perhaps the shell surrounding an indoor marketplace. Instead, she discovered upon being waved inside that it was actually an enormous casino.

Though the games being played were new to her, the overall ambiance was unmistakable. The sound of money changing hands, the smell of smoke in the air, and the taste of greed seasoned by a hint of desperation all would have fit right in at the resort town of Tanzaku-gai. The decor was a strange mix of the brightly colored paper decorations she expected to see in a place like this interspersed with flashing lights and noisemakers.

She could only take in the casino's ambiance in passing as she was hustled along the casino floor by her guide and up a staircase that had been blocked off by a velvet rope. Upon reaching the second floor she was led to a sliding door that yet another guard opened to reveal an opulent private room.

The room was dominated by a long, low wooden table. Six men sat around the table on cushions placed directly on the woven mats that made up the floor. A seventh man sat in an armchair positioned at the center of the table facing the door. Tenten didn't need to see the metal mask to know that this was Lung holding court.

An empty space had been left directly across the table from Lung. She stepped forward to face him and gave the barely noticeable bow appropriate for a Kage greeting another Kage before gracefully dropping down to sit in seiza. Her formal posture was a stark contrast with Lung's relaxed slouch. The contrast was only heightened by the fact that she was in her relatively formal shinobi outfit while he was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt with the sleeves torn off and his men were in similarly casual attire. Lung studied her for a time, his narrow eyes visible behind his mask, before turning to say something to one of his subordinates.

Lung spoke a brief sentence in a language Tenten did not understand. The man he spoke to looked a bit surprised, but responded in the same language. Soon the men seated around the table were all chatting away happily without paying the slightest attention to Tenten's presence. Obviously Lung intended to make her wait before she could have her audience with him.

Tenten calmly kept her gaze focused over Lung's shoulder and took in the flow of the conversation both by listening and by observing with her peripheral vision. She soon concluded that the men at the table did not usually report directly to Lung. Their mannerisms went beyond the respect naturally owed to a superior and betrayed the nerves usually present in a rare meeting with a distant boss. Lung at least had the sense not to conduct important business in front of her. In all likelihood he had gathered this group together purely to make her wait.

She wasn't bothered by this in the least. It was something that she and Lisa had expected and, after all, she had moved into his territory and now was seeking to speak with him. After she had bullied his underling into securing this meeting it was only natural for Lung to preserve his own face by making her wait. Lung also had the appropriate stature to pull this kind of move. For her part, Tenten was satisfied that she had made her point earlier and felt no need to try to humiliate Lung on his home turf.

She spared a brief moment of thanks for her sensei's training that meant that she could sit in this fashion for hours, if not comfortably, at least without suffering from physical harm.

For the next hour the only person who acknowledged Tenten's existence was the woman serving drinks around the table. She placed a small jar of sake and drinking cup in front of her on her way to serving the men. The woman was wearing clothes that Tenten could only describe as a whore's attempt to ape a geisha's traditional clothing. Her likely profession was only confirmed in Tenten's mind by her generally coquettish manner as she served the men their drinks, up to her tolerance, if not enjoyment, of an outright groping at Lung's hands. While Tenten thought it was a little rude that she was forced to pour her own sake, she was happy to have her drink stay as far out of the serving woman's hands as possible.

The sake was quite good, at least. Tenten had only had experience drinking during an extended mission in one of the more rural areas of Fire Country. Lung's sake was in a whole different world than the rotgut the locals had forced on her team in gratitude back then. She could hardly taste the alcohol and sipping the drink produced a pleasant warmth in her belly instead of a searing blaze.

The same chakra circulation that kept the blood flowing through her legs also ensured that the booze would never get her more than slightly tipsy, but drinking at least helped her to pass the time. Tenten drank slowly but was still most of the way through her jar when Lung finally turned to address her directly.

"Let's not forget our guest. You come before me with pressing business, I assume."

His voice was deep, in keeping with his large frame. In all honesty, he had the presence and bearing of a leader of men. Tenten couldn't help but feel puzzled that such a man would debase himself by becoming the leader of a criminal gang. She kept her expression calm despite the confusion she was feeling.

She also didn't respond to the obvious provocation in his tone, setting down her drink with a gentle click before she replied. "I would like to speak in private."

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. Finally deciding to humor her request, he turned to bark a command at his men. They streamed out of the room, closing the door behind them. The whore serving drinks left only briefly before returning with fresh jugs of sake. No sooner had she set them on the table than Lung tugged her into his lap, where she fell in a flurry of giggles and fluttered eyelashes. Lung gave her a lazy grin before he turned his attention back to Tenten.

"You live in my territory. You owe me tribute. What do we have to discuss?"

Tenten couldn't say whether he was trying to provoke her as a test of her mettle or simply because he felt like it. Either way, she refused to rise to the bait.

"The form of payment," Tenten said. "Cash or services."

As she spoke she leaned forward. With one hand she set a crisp new hundred dollar bill on the table. With the other she carefully placed a kunai with the blade facing outwards, away from both of them. Lung's eyes narrowed as he studied the kunai for a moment before he spoke.

"What service could you possibly offer me?"

"Once a year you need only mention a name that troubles you," Tenten said, holding up her hand with the fingers pinched together before splaying them out as though scattering flower petals in the wind. "It will trouble you no further."

Lung shoved the whore off of his lap and leaned forward. "You think I need somebody else to kill my enemies?"

From his tone he was bothered, but not yet truly offended. Tenten took a slow sip of her drink, absently watching the whore scuttle off to stand at the edge of the room before she replied. "I think many of your enemies are still alive. Some things require a subtle touch."

Lung sneered at her, the expression only slightly obscured by his mask. "You believe yourself an assassin, little girl?"

Tenten gave him a gentle smile before tapping into her chakra to release her killing intent.

The use of killing intent was in its heart a communications technique. It used chakra to connect the spirits of two people to allow them to compare their experience, ability, and readiness to kill. When the gap between the two was large the result was almost immediate incapacitation.

Lung was not immediately incapacitated.

Tenten could feel the killing intent gushing forth from him, surrounding him in a bloody tide. Here was a man who killed in rage. A man who killed to inspire terror. A man who killed friend or foe alike in his rampages.

Tenten countered with the cold professionalism of a hired killer. She killed the people Konoha asked her to kill. She could kill in anger, but she didn't need to be angry to kill. For her obstacles and her targets she had all the compassion of an unsheathed blade.

If Lung's killing intent rolled forward like a river of blood, her killing intent shot forward like a flurry of kunai. The blades first froze the leading edge of the bloody surge before beginning to chip it away into nothingness. At the same time, the flow of blood was refreshed by a seemingly bottomless well of fury coming from the gang leader.

Tenten could feel the sweat beading up on the small of her back as she pressed the attack. She was making progress, gradually shifting the point of contact in their killing intents away from her and closer to him, but it was agonizingly slow. She felt that the tables could be turned in an instant if she were to let up the pressure. As their killing intent intermingled she could faintly sense a deep melancholy underlying his rage and holding him back. If not for that flaw in his killing intent she doubted she would be making any progress at all.

Her own confidence was just starting to waver when she saw the scales beginning to creep up the side of Lung's neck and remembered her purpose. She had no need to bring him low. She only needed him to take her seriously. Judging by his bloodline limit's response, that had been accomplished.

She dropped the connection between them. She kept the smile on her face as she saw Lung twitch from the sudden disappearance of the pressure he had been feeling. For her part, while she had known he was a savage killer, it was still jarring to experience for herself his animalistic rage. Even so, his power, his pride, and his latent fury were the whole reason she had sought out this partnership to begin with, so she continued as planned.

"I understand that I need to prove my sincerity," Tenten said. "One name now, then one each year."

Lung stared at her for a long, long moment before he spoke again. "Fenja."

Partially transformed as he was, his voice had lost some of the calm confidence of the man while gaining the rough overtones of the beast within.

"Our building will be safe," Tenten said, "and our students as well."

He gave a slow nod. "Yes."

"Very well," Tenten said.

She had the agreement she wanted, but she still felt like something was missing. If she were representing Konoha while negotiating an assassination, the bargain would be sealed with a signed document. She actually had a few of the appropriate forms tucked away in her storage scroll, though Lung would not be able to read them and would no doubt refuse to sign them even if he could. The PRT was at least nominally in charge of Brockton Bay and frowned on killing for hire. While she knew Lung didn't care much for what the PRT thought he would of course not want to create gratuitous evidence of his criminal activities. As Lisa had explained to her earlier, the only reason he would even accept this deal in the first place was because the two of them were bearing all of the risk.

Even so, a mere verbal agreement was inherently unsatisfying. Tenten thought back to some of the more outlandish tales she had heard of bandit customs. Bandits in Fire Country were largely illiterate and disdained written contracts. They had their own ways of pledging loyalty to each other. While Tenten hardly wanted to invoked a bond of blood brotherhood with a savage like Lung, perhaps a slightly different ritual would suffice to bind them together for a time.

Mind made up, Tenten set down her cup before filling it half full with sake. She picked up the kunai from the table and drew it across the palm of her right hand. Keeping her eyes locked on Lung, she clenched her hand into a fist and held it above the cup. A subtle application of chakra ensured that the wound clotted up and stopped bleeding before the cup overflowed.

She set the kunai down and pushed the cup into the center of the table without taking her eyes off of Lung.

She could imagine what he was thinking. The parahuman powers in Earth Bet were strange enough that it was possible that imbibing her blood would give her power over him. Even setting that aside, what she was proposing was a barbaric ritual that she suspected existed more in rumor than in fact even in Fire Country. It would be perfectly reasonable for him to reject the implicit offer.

In the end, though, he simply couldn't back down. A criminal lived and died by his reputation, and Lung had no interest in showing weakness in front of her. He filled his own cup part way full with sake, then drew an elongated fingernail-more of a talon, in truth, and evidence that his transformation had not fully subsided-along his palm, allowing a few drops of blood to fall into his cup. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he slid his cup into the middle of the table.

They picked up their cups together, holding them out in a silent toast, then tossed back their drinks. They each slammed their cup to the table at the same time, still holding eye contact.

"Good," Tenten said, breaking the silence with a smile and a nod. A moment later a thought occurred to her and she leaned forward, carefully pitching her voice so it wouldn't carry beyond the edge of the table. "Our talk... private."

She made sure to catch Lung's eyes with her own before shifting her gaze to linger on his whore, still standing by the wall at the edge of the room. Lung's eyes widened slightly behind the mask as he hesitated for a moment before nodding.

As expected of a bandit. He might claim to care about his people, but when push came to shove the only life he truly valued was his own.

ooOoo


	10. Chapter 10

ooOoo

Lisa had finished her second cup of coffee and was debating whether it was worth the energy to stand up to get a refill when a notification dinged on her computer. Pulling it up, she saw that their gate had just been opened. The associated live video showed Tenten heading up the walk. The bounce in her step told Lisa that the meeting had been successful. Either that or Lung was dead, but something that big probably would have shown up on one of Lisa's news feeds by now.

Lisa headed downstairs to meet her friend in the entry way, pausing only briefly to refill her coffee mug along the way. She arrived just as Tenten finished kicking off her sandals and changing into a pair of slippers.

"Welcome home," Lisa said.

"It went just like you said," Tenten said, smiling broadly. "He was dancing on the palm of your hand the whole time."

Lisa's answering smile felt a little strained. It was always nice to be praised, although to be fair anticipating Lung's decision hadn't been that difficult. Fenja was one of the few capes that could keep up with him and constrain his actions as he ramped up and also lacked the status or reputation to be considered the sort of respected enemy Lung would reserve for himself to deal with. She also had figured that he would feel it was appropriate to send a female assassin after a female target.

It was hard to feel too joyous when the end result was that she was condemning a woman to death. She'd like to fob off the responsibility on Lung, but of course they never would have presented him with the option if they hadn't known who he was going to pick. Lisa and Tenten were determined to make big changes in the Brockton Bay criminal underworld. If Lung felt blindsided or threatened by those changes he would lash out, and that wouldn't end well for anyone. The whole point of Tenten's visit was to give Lung a feeling of control that would keep him content to stay on the sidelines.

Lisa's plan had been driving toward this moment from the beginning. She feared it would leave a stain on her soul. Honestly, she feared it would be the first of many.

"Fenja," Lisa said, then sighed before forcefully shoving her melancholy away. Fenja had chosen to join the gang of super powered Nazi villains of her own will. Lisa needed to stop wallowing in guilt and start focusing on the next step in their plan. "She'll be near Kaiser whenever he makes a public appearance, together with her sister."

"Three for one," Tenten said, her eyes narrowing. "But we're only going to kill one, right?"

Lisa smiled and took a sip of her coffee. "Kaiser is the glue that holds the Empire together. If he died they would splinter into several smaller gangs."

Parahuman gangs naturally had a sort of soft cap of five or six capes before they started running into problems. Capes, especially of the criminal variety, weren't the most stable individuals. They also tended to have large egos to go along with tremendous personal power. Even the Protectorate had a hard time keeping more than ten members in any one branch, usually resorting to independent sub-teams that hardly interacted with each other whenever a branch grew too large. For Kaiser to maintain the Empire's roster at upwards of fifteen capes was nothing short of a miracle.

Also impressive was his ability to keep the Empire's non-parahuman contingent unified despite widely diverging interests. He offered bread and circuses to the Empire's lower class contingent in the form of cheap drugs and Hookwolf's dog fighting rings, in addition to a heavy dose of rhetoric that encouraged them to blame their personal failings on nefarious outsiders. He offered protection to the middle class, both in keeping their neighborhoods free of non-organized crime and keeping their jobs safe from competition from blacks or foreigners. To the wealthy he offered the perks of power that money couldn't usually buy. And, of course, there was the contingent of true believers in the cause that bought wholeheartedly into the Iron Dream.

At least four groups of people that would all feel outright disdain if not hatred for each other, and Kaiser kept the whole thing ticking along like a machine. It truly was a waste. In a decent world Kaiser would have been a successful politician or a CEO. It took a shithole like Brockton Bay on a shitty dimension like Earth Bet to make that kind of man decide the best way to use his talents was to run a Nazi gang.

"As entertaining as it would be to watch Nazis killing Nazis, that kind of chaos would invite interference from outside gangs," Lisa continued. "If fear of Lung is what keeps the villains here from going overboard, fear of the Empire is what keeps outsiders away. That's why we need to leave Kaiser and his intimidating image intact even as we hollow out his strength."

In the same way that she could almost admire Kaiser's skill in keeping the Empire running, Lisa almost felt bad for what she was going to do to him. He had assembled his machine piece by piece in the painstaking work of a lifetime, building the ordinary criminal gang created by his father into the dominant force of Brockton Bay. She would take that machine apart piece by piece, leaving the outward appearance in place while the internal workings gradually ceased to function. When the time was right the whole thing would fall apart at a single stroke.

Lisa's feelings of guilt died stillborn when she reminded herself that Kaiser's life's work was, after all, the promotion of Nazism.

"Leaving her sister alive will remind Kaiser every day of what he has lost," Lisa said. "Instead of making a clean break and finding a new bodyguard the old wound will reopen every time he sees her."

Lisa took another sip of coffee and watched Tenten to see her reaction. Judging by the way that her grin turned positively vicious, she felt she had successfully appealed to her friend's bloodthirsty streak.

"As expected, you have thought things through," Tenten said.

"Thank you for listening," Lisa said, then hesitated. She hated to admit any weakness, but she finally decided that she and Tenten were past trying to hide doubts from each other. "I know you're more experienced than I am with this kind of thing."

Lisa wasn't sure if she was referring to experience with violence in general or with exterminating criminals in particular. Either way, Tenten's experience vastly outstripped hers. Of course Lisa was a thinker and had more local knowledge. She was confident that she was the smartest person in the room most of the time. But she'd never been quite sure why Tenten was so willing to take her direction once they'd set out to fulfill the Number Man's request.

Tenten gave the implicit question the attention that it deserved. She spent a long moment in contemplation, tapping her chin as she thought.

"I know my strengths," Tenten finally said. "I trust myself to read a battlefield. I expect you to take my advice about tactics. But all these twists and turns and scheming aren't really part of my nindo."

"Your what?" Lisa asked. She understood the idea of playing to your strengths, but this new bit of vocabulary seemed to have some deeper connotations to it.

"My... hmm... shinobi way? Path of life?" Tenten said, searching for the right phrase. "In this life your actions are written on your spirit and resonate with your chakra. In time, your habits wear a path in your soul and the resonance builds to become your nindo. You are strongest when you fight for your ideals. Going against your nindo can weaken you or even cause injury."

She should have known that learning new superpowers would come with a drawback. "When were you going to tell me about this? What if I had chosen a bad path?"

Tenten laughed. "There is no good or bad path. Your nindo is a part of you. You will discover it for yourself in time."

Lisa took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She was already at Tenten's mercy when it came to chakra usage, and if Tenten thought she didn't have a problem then she probably didn't have a problem. She was still curious, though. "What's yours, then?"

"In short, I would say my nindo is this: straight for the target. Quick, efficient, direct. It's how I like to do things and what I do best," Tenten said. "Like I said, complicated plans are not my strength. But if you make the overall plan then I can take each of my pieces of it and do it my way, in straightforward fashion."

Lisa blinked. She hadn't expected that somebody's whole life philosophy would be subject to that kind of, well, she could only call it rules-lawyering.

"Isn't that cheating?"

"No," Tenten said, shaking her head before smiling brightly and giving Lisa a thumbs up. "Teamwork!"

ooOoo

The Empire ran dog fighting rings here and there throughout Brockton Bay. The real high profile events, though, were held every other week at an old junkyard on the edge of the city. Although Kaiser had no personal interest in the sport, he still showed up at the big fights from time to time to show his solidarity with the Empire's rank and file.

Tenten was huddled in an alcove across the street and half a block away from the entrance to the junkyard. She was under a transformation technique that made her appearance blend in with the vagrants scattered throughout the neighborhood, although in the driving rain of the summer storm the Empire contingent probably wouldn't have noticed her even if she were wearing her outfit from that Uber & Leet video that had made her locally famous.

The two men guarding the gate of the junkyard did not show the alertness Tenten would expect of sentries charged with keeping an eye out for serious threats. Instead their attention was focused on the stream of people passing through the gate, ensuring that nobody made it past without paying the cover charge. From time to time they would step in to break up fights between rambunctious men in line, reinforcing the appearance that they were ticket takers and bouncers rather than sentries.

The festival atmosphere carried on inside the gate as well. Tenten had staked out this same location two weeks earlier. Although Kaiser had never made an appearance she had still found the trip useful in that she was able to familiarize herself with the ebb and flow of the event. Immediately inside of the gate was a large open courtyard that was bordered on each side by heaps of junk and at the back by the warehouse that hosted the fights themselves. That courtyard had been filled with people grilling food and serving up beer at impromptu food stands. Tenten had seen in her scouting earlier that the only change for tonight was that tents had been set up to keep the rain off of the grills.

It was striking just how normal the whole thing felt. The Empire was not behaving like a gang that feared detection by the authorities. It wasn't even acting like a gang that worried about attacks from other gangs. Instead, it was putting on this event as if it were a perfectly ordinary part of the community.

In retrospect, it was something that had bothered her about Lung's casino as well. He wasn't running some kind of fly-by-night operation that was ready to relocate once the authorities discovered his locations. He was putting down deep roots that he was confident would remain undisturbed.

Tenten bit back a curse as a gust of wind sent a sheet of rain straight past the meager protection offered by her little nook to soak through her clothes. The evening was too warm to rank very high on her list of most unpleasant missions, but she still didn't enjoy getting rained on. She caught herself cursing Lisa's inability to provide a more specific date and time when she could find Kaiser and chided her own immaturity. To catch a gang leader by spending one night every two weeks watching for him was already an amazing thing.

A car caught Tenten's attention as it smoothly pulled past the line of people waiting to get in. She didn't know much about automobiles, but the casual disregard for the restrictions the other cars had been observing suggested that this one held somebody important. She held her breath as the driver got out and held an umbrella at the ready before walking around to open the passenger side door. When an armored man stepped out of the car she let out a short, triumphant exhale as a smile crept onto her face. When two armored women clambered out of the back seat to flank the armored man, her grin only widened.

She took another deep breath and waited for her heart rate to calm down, leaning back against the wall of her alcove. As inattentive as the guards had been, she had to assume they would be at their most alert while their boss was present. Besides, there was no rush. The main event wouldn't be starting for a while and Kaiser would no doubt take his time working the crowd before he made his way to his seat.

She waited until a few minutes after Kaiser had gone inside before she stood up and staggered off down the street. She headed away from the gate and turned into the first alleyway she passed. After a quick glance confirmed that the coast was clear she dropped her transformation and channeled chakra to her feet before running at the wall in front of her. A few seconds later she was standing on top of the five story building where she had stashed her pack earlier.

The first thing she did was pull out a pair of binoculars before crawling on her belly to the edge of the roof. She had a clear view over the entire junkyard from here. Far below she could make out the knot of people surrounding Kaiser as he ambled along, still only halfway to the building where the fights would take place. A careful survey of the perimeter showed no guards posted around the edges. It was possible that she had missed somebody, but Tenten didn't think she had.

A complacent enemy was a gift from the heavens. She would only have this kind of opportunity once. She needed to make the most of it.

After running down the side of the building back into the alley she made her way to the street that ran parallel to the junkyard but one block away. She took her time walking several blocks before turning and walking back towards her target. She soon found herself walking past the corner of the fence to reach a small footpath that ran along the side of the property. It didn't take long before she was well out of sight of the road and shielded from the view of the Empire by half the junk on the property.

A small flex of chakra let an easy jump carry her over the razor wire atop the fence to land inside the junkyard with a soft thud. The stack of junked automobiles in front of her provided plenty of footholds that let her jump from car to car until she reached the top of the pile. Once there she began to leap from pile to pile until only a single stack of cars stood between her and the warehouse. At that point she carefully picked her way down until she stood in the deserted alley between junk piles.

For the first time that evening Tenten was glad for the presence of the rain as she performed a set of hand seals and created a trio of water clones. The water all around her eased the drain on her chakra and she was soon facing three identical copies of herself. Well, almost identical. The three of them didn't have her pack.

Tenten flipped the pack around from her back to her front and began to rummage around inside, soon picking out the goodies to distribute to her clones. Three submachine guns and two smoke grenades, all courtesy of Coil's poorly-secured armory.

Her water clones had never been particularly useful. They had a tiny fraction of her strength and ability and dissolved on taking any kind of solid hit. Tenten also hadn't been particularly impressed by Earth Bet's firearms. They were terribly loud and seemed more likely to annoy a serious opponent than accomplish anything worthwhile. Arming her clones with firearms, though, that was an idea with some potential. Today was more of a proof of concept than anything else, but Tenten already had some plans for the future.

Once her clones were properly armed, they each shimmered briefly before transforming. Tenten found herself facing three not quite identical large men dressed all in black, complete with body armor bulking out their torsos and balaclavas covering their faces. She nodded in satisfaction and climbed up the last junk pile between her and the warehouse. There was no need to go over the plan with clones that had been created with a single purpose in mind.

Tenten had scouted the warehouse in front of her quite thoroughly before her first stake out. It had been much easier to infiltrate the property when no Empire events were taking place.

The front of the building facing the entrance gate had a set of double doors that could be thrown wide open on a nice day to allow for easy entrance and exit. Today those doors were kept closed except when somebody was actually using them. The front doors led straight to the fighting arena. The Empire had installed a set of stadium bleachers around the arena proper, complete with a slightly separated seating area that Tenten assumed was meant for VIPs like Kaiser.

The rear of the building was a loading dock that the Empire used to move the dogs into the building. It led into a series of back rooms that acted as a back stage area on fight nights.

The side of the building didn't have anything interesting about it other than a set of windows mounted near the roof that let light in on sunny days. The building wasn't particularly well maintained and the window that Tenten had smashed open for convenience's sake was hardly the only one missing. It wasn't a security concern unless a potential intruder could walk up a four story wall.

Tenten thought about doing things the lazy way and jumping from her position atop the junk pile to the roof before shaking her head. The noise of her landing probably wouldn't be noticed between the sound of the rain and the excitement of the fight, but she wanted to do this right. She took one last look around for guards before she picked her way down to ground level, walked up to the side of the building, and began walking up its surface.

She pulled herself upright and used her hands to stick to the wall as she came level with the window and took a peek inside. The bleachers surrounded the fighting pit and were well away from the side wall, so she was looking at the backs of the heads of the members of the crowd closest to her. Lifting her gaze, she saw the VIP platform was populated as expected. Kaiser, his two bodyguards, Hookwolf and his two flunkies, Cricket and Stormtiger, all easy to identify from the pictures Tenten had seen.

She eased herself in through the window before dropping down onto a beam that spanned the width of the building. What lighting was present was focused on the action, as was the crowd's attention. Tenten began fishing around in her bag once more. This time she withdrew a small tripod and a video camera.

Once it was switched on the camera would begin transmitting video back to Lisa. Tenten didn't quite understand how it worked, but apparently it was readily available technology. Coil's mercenaries were known to make heavy use of such things. All of the indicator lights had been covered with black tape and the view port had been wrapped with a black sock. It meant that Tenten would have to crouch awkwardly in order to see what was being recorded but it was worth it to avoid any telltale glow that might give her away.

She carefully crouched down and began creeping along the beam until she reached the point where it intersected with another beam that spanned the length of the warehouse, allowing access to both the front and back doors. There was just enough room to place the tripod at the intersection. Tenten settled the camera in place and flipped it on before carefully adjusting the angle and zoom. She only had to fiddle with the sock around the viewport a little bit before she confirmed what she was seeing: a clean picture of the VIP area and the green bar graph icon that indicated that the video was being transmitted.

The view through the camera confirmed what she had seen with her own eyes. Kaiser sat straight, his bearing regal but not particularly attentive to the action in the ring. Hookwolf and his crew were leaning forward and watching the fight with interest. One of the girls with Kaiser was paying close attention to the fight while the other seemed more interested in fawning on her emperor. Neither of them was acting anything at all like a bodyguard protecting a client in a dangerous situation.

Tenten pulled away from the camera and glanced down at her hand, where she had inked the symbol for "shield." The target was the one interested in the fight, then. Her shield was propped up against her legs while her sword was strapped in a scabbard across her back. Tenten followed Fenja's eyes down to the ring but found that the fight couldn't hold her interest. The dogs had decent fighting spirit, but their fighting techniques had little more than tenacity going for them.

She looked up at the ceiling and focused on nothing in particular as she took a deep breath. This was the point of no return. So far, everything she had done could be undone. She could sneak back out of the warehouse, collect her clones, and head back into the city with nobody the wiser.

If she went through with this plan, she was risking the enmity of not just the Empire but also the PRT. Lisa's plan was clever, but Tenten knew inconvenient facts had a way of coming to light at the most inopportune time. There was also a part of her that hesitated to carry out an assassination in a foreign country without any official approval whatsoever. It was what she had to do in order to get back to Konoha but, still, she didn't like it.

She could think of a dozen ways to quietly dispose of Fenja that were less likely to draw PRT attention. She could think of a dozen reasons she didn't want the PRT coming after her.

In the end, it was a simple memory from two weeks ago that tipped the balance. While Kaiser hadn't shown up during Tenten's last stakeout, she'd had a chance to observe plenty of members of his Empire. Men, women, even children tagging along and enjoying the impromptu outdoor festival set up in the courtyard outside. She remembered watching a young family enter together. She remembered the father laughing as he bought his daughter some popcorn.

No proper hidden village would ever let a gang get so entrenched on its territory. No proper government would allow criminals to feel safe bringing their family with them to a gangland social event. No government that was so ineffective deserved her deference, let alone allegiance.

Lisa's plan would shake the gangs out of their complacency, if nothing else. As to whether it would work in the end? Tenten couldn't say. She hadn't been lying about her nindo. Straight to the target.

Time to live up to her words.

She opened her pack for the last time. A coil of rope with a grappling hook went over her left shoulder while she pulled out an over-sized iron dart with her left hand. The pack itself hung from a strap that she shrugged over her head and pulled tight so that it stuck close to her body despite the reduced weight. She performed a few hand seals and felt the transformation technique that matched her appearance to her clones outside. She drew back her right hand, poised to throw, and waited.

The timing was the trickiest part. The interior of the dart had been hollowed out and stuffed with five rolled up explosive tags. Exploding too soon or too late would be a disaster. Fortunately, Tenten always paid a little extra to ensure that her fuses all had consistent timing.

The noise of the crowd below her changed in tone as the fight reached a climactic moment.

Tenten channeled her chakra into the explosive tag.

One one thousand.

The crowd-including the VIP box-surged to its feet, cheering wildly.

Two one thousand.

Fenja was bouncing on her feet. She turned around to say something to her sister.

Three-

Tenten's arm snapped forward. The whip crack of the dart breaking the sound barrier was lost in the general tumult of the crowd. The dart flew straight and true, embedding itself deep in Fenja's neck.

-one thousand.

There was a tremendous explosion as all five explosive tags went off simultaneously. Tenten was only dimly aware of the confusion gradually turning to panic in the crowd below. She sprinted along the beam until she stood over the front door. Once there she shrugged the rope off of her shoulder and secured the grappling hook in place.

She didn't have long to wait before her clones burst in through the double doors. The first one through sprayed the crowd with an extended burst of automatic fire. The second and third rolled smoke grenades out in front of the three of them before joining in with their own bursts of covering fire. Once the smoke had started to spread Tenten tossed the loose end of the rope toward the ground before taking hold and sliding down.

She landed in a world of smoke and gunfire. Fortunately, maintaining her spatial orientation while blind was one of the first things her sensei had taught her. It was a basic building block in learning to resist visual illusion techniques. She tapped the closest clone on the shoulder before darting out the door. Her clones would take advantage of the cover created by the smoke and disperse back into water after tossing their weapons away.

Outside was strangely calm. The food stalls were long deserted as everybody had gone inside for the fight. The rain had played in her favor again. On a nicer day people might have stayed outside to enjoy the weather, making things more complicated. As it was, Tenten was able to make it into the seclusion of the junk piles without being observed. A quick flash step had her standing on top of the closest pile. A few more flash steps had her standing on a rooftop several blocks away, at which point she dropped her transformation, dropped down to the street, and settled into a ground eating jog.

Her work for the evening was done. Now it was time for Lisa to work her magic with the video.

ooOoo


	11. Chapter 11

ooOoo

Armsmaster never felt at ease in Director Piggot's office. Part of it was that she had never bothered upgrading the chairs in front of her desk to handle the weight of a man wearing power armor. Part of it was that the security measures built into the room prevented him from browsing the internet. The bulk of it, though, was that every time he visited this office it was to meet with Director Piggot.

"When our grandfathers rooted the Nazis out of Europe they didn't hide behind a bunch of capes. They fought with gumption, firearms, and good old American know-how," Piggot said, reading from the screen in front of her. Armsmaster had never considered her much of an orator, but she was showing a surprising flair for sarcasm. "These bastards think they're some sort of ubermensch who can roll all over our home town. Sign up with the Brockton Bay Resistance today and show them they're wrong!"

The director pushed the screen to the side, giving Armsmaster a glimpse of the embedded video that had accompanied the call to arms during the brief period that it had remained on PHO. She took advantage of the clear sight line to fix him with a steady glare, momentarily ignoring Miss Militia seated by his side.

"What do you have?"

Armsmaster took a moment to review the available data. There was a lot of it. Ever since the video of Fenja's assassination had first appeared on PHO it had been the dominant topic of conversation in Brockton Bay. Unfortunately, concrete information was proving more difficult to come by.

"The online investigation has been... inconclusive," Armsmaster said. The one silver lining in all of this was that the appearance of a locally filmed snuff video made it easy to get a warrant. Unfortunately, the perpetrators were no fools and had obviously anticipated this level of scrutiny.

"Oh?"

"The initial post was from a throwaway account on PHO. I traced the original connection through a series of relays, but the trail dried up in northern France," Armsmaster said. Piggot raised an eyebrow, and he fidgeted slightly before he continued. "Specifically, Normandy."

That earned a snort from the director. "Anything on the group?"

"Before the video was posted? Nothing. Now? They have a fan club and a crowdfunding project," Armsmaster said. "I think it's obvious from the video that they aren't who they claim to be."

Miss Militia gave a slight hum of disagreement. "Don't underestimate what ordinary people will do when they're pushed into a corner."

"Something like this is possible. God knows, plenty of gangs got their start through vigilante murders," Armsmaster allowed. "But to assassinate a brute on video and escape cleanly? This is the work of someone who knows what they're doing."

"How many military veterans live in the city?" Miss Militia asked. "Is it so hard to believe that Empire 88 simply angered the wrong person?"

Piggot nodded to acknowledge the point before turning back to Armsmaster. "You have a suspect."

"Coil," Armsmaster said. "He stands to benefit from open violence erupting between Empire 88 and the civilian population. He employs teams of well trained mercenaries. He has access to military grade equipment."

He paused briefly before moving from the realm of fact to the realm of speculation. "While we don't know what his power is, every indication is that it is a thinker ability of some kind. This 'Brockton Bay Resistance' has all the hallmarks of a thinker trying to be too clever for their own good. Trying to play two sides off against each other while watching the show. In this case, trying to drive a wedge between the Empire and the mass of citizens who are willing to extend it tacit support."

"Even if the group itself is fake, the outpouring of support online is undeniably real," Miss Militia said. "The fact that the city is willing to cheer for vigilante murder is damning."

Armsmaster grimaced, but he could hardly disagree. When he'd first transferred to the Protectorate East Northeast he had taken it as a personal affront that an openly Nazi criminal gang had established itself in his city. Somehow after day after day and year after year of grinding away at the problem of parahuman crime, it had simply become an accepted fact of life. Not that Armsmaster would ever condone summary execution of Empire 88 capes... but he could understand why people would.

"Keep an open mind for now. For all we know this Resistance is a real group and they're being manipulated by a thinker or two. Run down every lead you can," Piggot said. "And remember, the Empire's going to be out for blood. Stay safe out there."

The dismissal was clear in her tone. Armsmaster nodded and stood. Miss Militia stood as well, falling in behind him as he headed to the door. He paused when the Director called out.

"One more thing. Anger makes people sloppy," Piggot said. "God knows we're due for a break. If you see the Empire open themselves up to it, don't hesitate to knock them down a peg or two."

Armsmaster nodded again. "Understood."

Taking down a villainous cape was always its own reward. In this environment a PRT capture of Empire capes would also help calm the mob of ordinary citizens crying out for rough justice.

Armsmaster split off from Miss Militia to make his way down to his lab. His gear wasn't going to upgrade itself. Tweaking his armor to be relatively Kaiser-proof was going to be quite a challenge. Still, rather than turning over possible designs in his mind as he walked, Armsmaster found himself dwelling on Miss Militia's comments. Could it be possible that the Brockton Bay Resistance was just what it claimed to be? A simple collection of armed and angry, but otherwise unremarkable, citizens looking to take down the Nazis in their midst?

He just couldn't accept it. Every instinct he had developed in his years of experience was telling him this was a thinker setup. Thinkers always thought they were the smartest person in the room. They loved sitting on the sidelines and watching their enemies tear each other apart. Trolling people online from behind the safety of a computer screen while other people put their lives on the line was a thinker's dream.

He stopped in the middle of the hallway, turning that thought over in his mind. Smug. Condescending. Troll.

He called up Dragon's number on his in built communications system and barely fumbled through a greeting before getting to the point, trying to hold onto his train of thought.

"Dragon, I have a question about that video," he said, picking up the pace as he neared his workshop

"I haven't been able to turn up anything new," she said, then paused. "You thought of something?"

"Do you have any record of what Tattletale was up to last night?" he asked.

"PHO records show that she posted the latest chapter of her capefic a little over half an hour before the video appeared. She spent the hour after that engaged in an increasingly heated discussion with a member of 'Team Imperial Arms,'" Dragon replied, a slight hint of amusement audible through her professional facade. "She eventually received a one week threadban. Tracking back her location shows that she was at home. There's no overlap between her and any of the destinations on the video track back."

Armsmaster grunted in disappointment. No smoking gun, then. It wasn't impossible for a thinker of Tattletale's caliber to fool Dragon when it came to computer networks, but it seemed highly unlikely. Well, he'd still put a couple men in charge of keeping tabs on her physical location. Even if they didn't turn up any useful information it was still a good idea to keep a protective eye on independent capes when gang activity started to heat up.

"You know she only writes that stuff to get under your skin," Dragon said, apparently misinterpreting his response.

Armsmaster was in the middle of the retina scan that would give him access to the workshop. Fortunately, the advanced technology was able to complete the scan as he spoke.

"That's not-I mean, I wouldn't mind taking her account down," Armsmaster said. "But writing amateurish smut for internet publication isn't a crime."

Dragon started to say something before biting it back. Armsmaster very carefully did not sigh out loud. Dragon could be a real stickler for the rules. After a moment's consideration, he decided he should encourage her to speak her piece. It wasn't that he was excited to hear an extended lecture on the first amendment, but it was better to get it out of the way now than for her to spring it on him after she'd had a while to get wound up about it.

"What?" he asked, taking a seat and laying out his tools. It was rude to talk and tinker, but he could do prep work while holding a conversation.

"Well..." Dragon said, strangely reluctant. "I wouldn't call it amateurish."

As his tools fell from his hands and scattered all over his workshop, Armsmaster found himself wishing fervently for a lecture on the first amendment.

ooOoo

Lisa sat in front of her computer and took a deep breath. She held it for a moment, then completed the cycle with a long slow exhalation. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

Once she felt she'd reached the properly meditative state of mind, she asked herself a question. Was she ready? She reached to the side and slugged back the rest of her cup of coffee. Probably not. On the other hand, did it matter? She directed her gaze to the post-it note stuck to the top of her monitor and its simple message: "SMILE."

Lisa felt her usual grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't like she'd ever shied away from winging it in the past.

Before she could lose her nerve, she flipped open her business phone and punched in a number that definitely wasn't on her contact list. The call was picked up after only two rings.

"Tattletale," Coil said, after a brief pause.

 _Surprised that I would call. Angry. Angry at the world in general. Angry at me in particular. Wants to-_

Lisa shut down that train of thought before it could get too dark and focused on that initial reaction. However minor, however controlled his reaction, Coil was surprised that she had called.

This must be how it had felt to club Vikare and watch him crumble. Coil presented himself as the man with all the answers. An invulnerable mastermind. And now that she had poked a hole in the facade, that whole image just dried up and blew away in the wind. If Coil could be surprised, then Coil could be killed.

Lisa was lost in her daydreams of outwitting and destroying Coil for what her power helpfully informed her was 1.83 seconds before she got her head back in the game and started making her play.

"We've got a deal, right?" she said, not disguising the irritation she always felt when speaking with Coil. "Consider this your Tattletale early warning call. Your plan worked. Kaiser's on the war path. Setting up a blitzkreig, even."

One silver lining to living in Brockton Bay was that she got to break out the Nazi-related wordplay that she would otherwise never get to use outside of the Internet.

"My plan?" Coil asked.

 _Still pissed, still murderous, slightly confused._

"You know, blowing up his bodyguard and blaming it on a bunch of normies?" Lisa said, making sure to really stretch her smile so that it would be obvious over the phone. "Points for style, but it wasn't that hard to figure out."

She was coming up on the moment of truth. She had half expected Coil to hang up by now, but it looked like she was going to get the chance to plant her little seed of doubt.

"Oh?" Coil asked.

Still pissed, still murderous, more confused.

"There aren't that many people in Brockton Bay with military grade weaponry and the discipline to use it well," she replied. "Especially once you exclude the Nazis."

"Suppose it wasn't my plan," Coil said.

Coil's reaction was always going to be the trickiest part of her scheme. It was easy enough to convince the Nazis that the hit was Coil's doing, but Coil himself would naturally know of his own innocence. He was also the only person in town besides her who had caught a good look at Tenten's lethality. It probably wouldn't be enough for him to be able to convince the Empire to stand down, but he'd still be able to do quite a bit of damage by lashing out at Lisa and Tenten.

Fortunately, Coil was a paranoid son of a bitch. By this point in the conversation, Lisa just had to do what came naturally.

She laughed. Full belly laughs, right into the receiver. Finally, she brought herself under control, though she was still a little out of breath when she spoke.

"Oh wait, you're serious?"

Lisa laughed harder.

To his credit, Coil didn't hang up on her. He didn't get to his lofty position in the criminal underworld by being impatient. He did sound like he was just about at the end of his rope when he spoke, though.

"I asked a question."

"Ok, ok, just, give me a minute," Lisa said, rubbing the tears of laughter from her eyes. "Oh... oh! All right, one thousand dollars."

"Tattletale," Coil said, a distinct note of warning in his voice.

 _Really wants to kill me right now._

To be fair, the feeling was mutual.

"What? This isn't a warning, this is an investigation," Lisa said, keeping her tone light. "You know it's a good price for a genuine thinker analysis."

"Very well," Coil said. It sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth, but Lisa could hear the tapping of a keyboard through the receiver. A moment later one of her open tabs flashed an alert that turned out to be a notice of a thousand dollars being deposited in her bank account. She felt a brief pang of regret that she hadn't asked for more money.

"It's midnight," Tattletale said, pitching her voice as best she could to approximate a movie trailer voice over, "do you know where your mercenaries are?"

"What's your point?" Coil asked.

"You only hire the best of the best, right?" Tattletale said, pausing only briefly for his grunt of acknowledgement. "Real hard core black ops spooks. The type who topple governments for fun. Now they're in Brockton, stuck in a rut fending off the Empire. Is it really a surprise some of them decided to take off the kid gloves?"

"They wouldn't-"

"Let's be honest... when you hired these guys, how high up was 'integrity' on the list of job qualifications?" Tattletale said, then laughed again when Coil didn't respond. "I could nail things down more specifically if you let me look at your personnel files."

"You've done quite enough already," Coil said, before ending the call.

Lisa took a deep breath. On the exhale she made a conscious effort to release all of the nervous tension that had built up during the call. She took a moment to wonder why the strongest powers seemed to be handed out mostly to complete assholes. Then she shook off the stray thought and let her power fully off the leash.

 _He bought it. Not completely. Enough to create a reasonable doubt. Doubt that will grow when he discovers the attack was committed with guns that he bought. Still hates me on general principles. Still wants to kidnap me and turn me into his drug-addicted pet. Would settle for murdering me in a pinch._

She shuddered, only partly from the initial pangs of the headache induced by such unrestricted use of her power. Then she popped a pair of ibuprofen and fired up a note taking program on her computer.

She'd surprised Coil today. Somehow. She needed to wring every drop of information she could out of this phone call so that she could present him with a more fatal surprise in the future.

ooOoo

Tenten was lying on the floor of Lung's preferred meeting room in his casino with her hands laced together behind her head and her head propped up on the soft fabric of a balled up cloak. The lights were off, but the open window allowed both sunlight and a refreshing breeze into the room, making for a rather pleasant wait. Tenten sat up when she heard footsteps approaching from the end of the hall, stealing a quick glance at her watch. She couldn't help but shake her head at the ridiculous versatility of Lisa's kekkei genkai.

Well, there was no point in being jealous. Tenten was deriving plenty of advantage from her friend's strength. She arranged herself in front of the meeting room table before picking up her teacup and channeling a brief burst of elemental chakra into the liquid contained inside.

By the time the door opened Tenten was sitting in seiza at the table, a thin curl of steam rising from her cup of tea. As expected, Lung was the first one through the door. As soon as he saw her he froze. After a moment he sighed before turning and barking an order to his men in a language she didn't understand. His meaning became clear enough as he stepped into the room by himself, sliding the door closed behind him.

No serving girl today. It was good that he was taking her seriously.

Lung retrieved a small bottle of alcohol and poured himself a drink before taking a seat. He bypassed the armchair this time, but he still assumed a relaxed slouch as he sat on the floor across from her. He took a short sip of his drink and studied her for a long moment before he said anything.

"Last night was noisy," he said. Although it was a rebuke, from his tone of voice he may as well have been talking about the weather. Tenten felt some relief that, however debauched his usual behavior, Lung was capable of at least some professionalism.

As for the substance of his complaint, she thought it rather petty. Lisa's plan seemed to be proceeding smoothly, and in any event if things went wrong there was nothing to point back to him. "You did not specify the manner of death."

"I suppose it would be too much to expect a heart attack," Lung said, chuckling to himself.

Tenten cocked her head, not sure what he found humorous. After a moment Lung waved his hand dismissively. She mentally shrugged and let it go, content to get back to her script.

"Fenja is dead," she said, "and your enemies prepare to fight each other."

Really, sparking open bloodletting between two rivals who were well aware of the existence of a third rival was a lot harder than most people thought. Tenten could think of a few missions she'd been on that would have benefited from Lisa's brand of cunning. For results this good she would usually expect bonus pay.

Lung at least seemed to recognize their accomplishment, as he nodded in response to her words.

"Yes," Lung said, the levity gone from his voice, "your business is under my protection."

Tenten nodded.

"I will give you a second name when the time is right," Lung said.

This was within Lisa's expectations. Lung gave them the first name in order to test their sincerity. When it came to the second name, he would rather have it in his pocket saved against a future need rather than use it proactively. Lung was fundamentally lazy. He did not look to use his power in order to expand his reach, but rather stockpiled it in order to protect what he had.

Tenten nodded to acknowledge the debt, then began to stand. She stopped when Lung held up his hand.

"Who are you?" he asked, his eyes suddenly locked on to her with increased intensity.

She gave him a professional smile. "Tenten."

"No. You..." he trailed off for a moment, gesturing vaguely in the air as he searched for the right word, "you are too... too much to be a blade for hire. Why aren't you running your own gang?"

Despite all of her careful preparation, Tenten still felt her heart race as a pulse of anger shot right through her. Bad enough that she had to treat with a self-styled bandit lord as though he were her equal. Now he dared to suggest that she would make a fine bandit herself? It was the sort of insult that could only be answered with cold steel.

She caught herself before her hands did more than twitch toward her hidden blades. Lung flinched back slightly, prompting her to release the hold on her chakra that had been subtly broadcasting her killing intent.

This was for a mission. Self-assigned, yes, but still a mission. Even if she couldn't comport herself with the bone-deep control that would come along with official orders from Konoha-a flaw that she would have to work on, now that she had noticed it-she could at least control herself well enough to stick to Lisa's well thought out plan.

Perhaps a few alterations were in order.

"Why aren't I building a castle on the sand?" Tenten asked, not trying to hide her sneer. "Why not live to satisfy my appetites? Why not die a pointless death?"

She punctuated her rhetorical questions with a cold snort. This time, Lung did not attempt to stop her as she rose to her feet.

As she stood, she took hold of a cloak that had been lying next to her on the floor. Once she was on her feet she spun, allowing the cloak to flare out as though she were putting it on. As soon as her body was fully hidden by the cloak she brought her hands together and performed a flash step out the window, alighting on the roof of the building across the street before the cloak had settled on the floor.

Tenten shook her head as she made her way across the rooftops back home. Lisa was going to chide her, and she probably deserved it. The two of them would be well served to stay on good terms with Lung and his gang. Still, though, there was only so much she could do if he couldn't keep a civil tongue in his head.

ooOoo

 _AN: Obligatory Coil explanation: with the Empire making an active push for lebensraum he doesn't have the luxury of splitting the timeline every time he answers the phone._


End file.
